Between Harlem and Paris: Haitian Internationalism in the Interwar Period, 1919-1937

This project locates the transnational contributions of elite Haitians to the efforts to remake blackness and mitigate the racial subjugation of people of African descent between 1919 and 1937. The arguments forwarded here are founded on archival materials such as letters, newspapers, personal documents, and the reports of government agents. Through my engagements with these documents, at times reading against the grain, I explore the ways in which my actors directed the course of events and shaped the discourses of major organizations that sought to affect Pan-African solidarity and promote anti-colonialism. It locates their participation two major sites interwar black internationalism: Harlem, New York City and Paris France. I argue elite Haitian men were central actors in the major initiatives launched by people of African descent to redefine blackness away from racist tropes and build a global community of people of African descent committed to abating racial and colonial subjugation