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Le Mulâtre
Victor Séjour

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Bras Coupé

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Victor Séjour was only 19 when he published "Le Mulâtre" in the magazine Revue des Colonies in March 1837. It's the first short story published by an African American (to use modern terminology), or a homme de couleur libre (free man of color), to use the terminology of the time. "Le Mulâtre" is set during the Revolution in Saint-Domingue, aka the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). It has been described as gothic revenge story, set against the backdrop of the slave revolt. Séjour was from New Orleans, the son of a man who moved there to escape the violence in Haiti.

It's almost impossible to overestimate the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the American psyche, especially in Louisiana. Refugees from Haiti doubled the size of New Orleans and kept the city predominately French-speaking for decades, despite the number of Americans moving in. They were divided about equally among white, slave, and free people of color. From Voodoo to red beans and rice to the city's first printing press, the Haitian immigrants made an impact on the city that is felt to this day.

The most important impact of the Haitian Revolution reached far beyond New Orleans and pervades American culture to this day — fear that what happened in Haiti could happen here. There were some small slave uprisings here, but nothing to match what happened in Haiti. But there has always been a fear that at any time we could have an uprising where slaves (and later black people in general) could seek revenge for the wrongs done to them. The fear that angry black people would rise up and kill their oppressors led to the extreme measures they took to subjugate slaves before the Civil War and black citizens after. In addition to the violent actions of white vigilantes, law enforcement culture evolved to protect and serve white citizens, and to control and oppress black people, Native Americans, immigrants, the poor, etc. When 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot for playing with a toy gun (in an open-carry state), the officer who shot him claimed that he had seen a man in his 20's with a gun. His misunderstanding of the situation was not unique; it's part of the culture of law enforcement. New Orleans developed a police department early, and it largely functioned to control slaves and immigrants. When the city authorities considered moving New Orleans to a 'bobby' system like England (where the police are unarmed), newspapers and police worked to create hysteria over an escaped slave named Bras Coupé, who was supposedly creating an armed insurrection of slaves in the swamps. The proposal failed.

Read & listen to my discussions of the Bras Coupé events in the links above. The Grandissimes is Cable's best-known work, and his account of the story is worked into the overall melodrama of the novel. Castellanos was a journalist writing at the end of the 19th Century, but his style is not a dry recounting of facts; instead, he writes lurid accounts of notorious events. He style is therefore more New York Post than New York Times. I have to wonder how reliable his account of events is, either.

I've come to believe that there really was an escaped one-armed slave, but that he was in no way involved in fomenting a general uprising. He provided an attractive, easily recognized target to the police and newspapers who were themselves trying to create panic among the pubic. This pattern has been repeated endlessly throughout American history to force through higher budgets and remove restrictions on the behavior of the police. In a recent example as of this writing, The FBI, Homeland Security, local police, and the media whipped up a panic over the release of the Joker movie, claiming that riots would ensue. Riots, I say! Police staked out theaters showing the movie, and plain-clothes officers attended the movie with the crowds. So far, I've seen neither Bras Coupé nor the Joker running amok, but the night is young.



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