Savannah Celebrates Haitian Revolutionaries

The city of Savannah, Georgia, like many cities across the South, has recently been trying  frantically to rid itself of its own history. Currently, debate is raging over what to do with the busts of Confederate Generals Francis Bartow and Lafayette McLaws in the city’s Forsyth Park. Those busts, like the Confederate sculpture “Silence” in Laurel Grove Cemetery and other memorials in the area, have been repeatedly vandalized with no attempt by the city government to interfere. Today, there is general consensus that soon this, the oldest city in Georgia, will have cleansed itself of all the reminders of its once proud history.

Yet, amazingly, at the same time that Savannah is erasing its Confederate history, it is celebrating what city fathers consider its Haitian.

That’s right. On Saturday, October 9, the city of Savannah, Georgia, held an official ceremony commemorating the fourteenth anniversary of the unveiling of a statue to the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, Haitian troops who participated in the 1779 “Battle of Savannah” on the colonists’ side during the American Revolution.

Singled out by the celebrants for special recognition was the young Henri Christophe, who later during the Haitian Revolution commanded troops that massacred five thousand whites in early 1804.

This celebration of Haitian history in one of the grand old cities of the South will no doubt be well attended in future years, as we learn that upwards of 91,000 illegal Haitian migrants are on their way.

For more, see The Haitian American on Facebook.

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