African American Women and Racial Uplift in U.S.-Occupied Haiti, 1915–34

In 1915, United States marines arrived on Haitian shores just south of Port-au-Prince. Their landing signaled the beginning of a U.S. occupation of Haiti that would cripple Haitian economic, social, and political life long after it ended in 1934. Scholars in History, African American Studies, Latin American Studies, Political Science and other disciplines have offered compelling insights into the ways in which African Americans worked with Haitians to bring the occupation to an end. This scholarship, however, has prioritized the anti-occupation activities of James Weldon Johnson and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People while deemphasizing the unique ways in which African American women engaged with Haitians during the same era. This paper uses an array of archival documents and published works to explore the ties between African American women and occupied Haiti. The paper highlights Harriet Gibbs Marshall’s philanthropic work in Port-au-Prince, drawing information from the Washington Conservatory of Music Records. In addition, the paper analyzes the reports on Haitian life written by Addie Hunton from archival records of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Records. I argue that the activities of Marshall, Hunton, and their peers show that even as African American women worked with black men to end the occupation they attempted use U.S. imperialism to their own ends. From 1915 to 1934, they established and promoted educational institutions and charitable organizations in Haiti, in essence building upon historical methods of racial uplift even as they joined a generation of “New Negroes” in critiquing U.S. imperialism abroad. By demonstrating this complex and seemingly contradictory impulse, my paper contributes to a growing, interdisciplinary body of scholarship on the U.S. occupation of Haiti and establishes new lines of inquiry into black political culture, women’s organizing, and U.S. imperialism.