“The Truth about Haiti: An NAACP Investigation”

Background: On July 29, 1915, U.S. Marines invaded Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, claiming the need to protect foreign lives and property. They placed Port-au-Prince under martial law, ruthlessly subdued armed resistance in rural areas, and began training a new Haitian militia. By 1919, Haitian Charlemagne Péralte had organized more than a thousand cacos, or armed guerrillas, to militarily oppose the Marine occupation. The Marines responded to the resistance with a counterinsurgency campaign that razed villages, killed thousands of Haitians, and destroyed the livelihoods of even more. American organizations such as the NAACP opposed the U.S. occupation of Haiti. They sent delegations that investigated conditions and protested the blatant racism and imperialism of U.S. policy in Haiti. In this article from 1920, NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson countered the standard justifications for U.S. occupation of Haiti.

. . .  Haiti is ruled today by martial law dispensed by Americans. There are nearly three thousand American Marines in Haiti, and American control is maintained by their bayonets. In the five years of American Occupation, more than three thousand innocent Haitians have been slaughtered.

There are three grounds on which the attempt is made to justify American intervention and the military occupation of Haiti. The first is that such a state of anarchy and bloodshed had been reached as could no longer be tolerated by the civilized world; the second, that the Haitians have demonstrated absolute unfitness to govern themselves; and the third, that great benefits have been brought to Haiti by American control. . . .

As to the first: The United States Government has wished to make it appear that it was forced on purely humane grounds to intervene in Haiti because of the tragic overthrow and death of President Vilbrun Guillaume, July 27–8, 1915, and that this government has been compelled to keep a military force in Haiti since that time to pacify the country maintain order. The fact is that for nearly a year before the coup d'état which overthrew Guillaume, the United States had been bringing pressure on Haiti to compel that country to submit to American control. Three diplomatic attempts had been made by three different missions. . . .  

Fitness To Rule: The unfitness of the Haitian people to govern themselves has been the subject of propaganda for the last century. . . . An observation of the city of Port-au-Prince is sufficient to refute this oft made assertion. Port-au-Prince is a clean, well paved, well lighted city. Its newer business buildings are constructed of concrete and brick. The wooden shanties which one so often sees in magazines and books illustrating the business section of the town are relics of the old French régime. . . .  Another point in the propaganda which has been so long circulated to prove the unfitness of the Haitians, is the statement that the people are congenitally and habitually lazy. . . . Anyone who travels the roads of Haiti will be struck by the sight of scores and hundreds and even thousands of women, boys and girls filing along, mile after mile, with the produce of their farms and gardens on their heads, or loaded on the backs of animals, to dispose of them in the markets of the towns. I do not see how anyone could accuse such people of being lazy. Of course, they might market their stuff more efficiently if they had automobile trucks; they have no automobile trucks, but they are willing to walk. . . . The Haitian people have also been accused of being ignorant and degraded. They are not degraded. I had ample opportunity to study the people of the cities, and the people of the country districts, and I found them uniformly kind, courteous and hospitable, living in a simple and wholesome manner. The absence of crime in Haiti is remarkable, and the morality of the people is strikingly high. . . . 

The third ground offered as justification is that great benefits have been brought to Haiti by American control. I made an honest effort to find out what things the Americans have done for the benefit of Haiti, during the five years of Occupation. I found that only three things could be advanced, and they were: The Improvement of the public hospital at Port-au-Prince; enforcement of rules of modern sanitation; and the building of the great road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitian. The improvement in the hospital is a worthy piece of work but cannot be made to justify military occupation. The enforcement of certain rules of sanitation is not quite so important as it sounds, for the reason that Haiti, under native rule, has always been a healthy country and never subject to the epidemics which used to sweep the countries circling the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The building of the road from Port-au-Prince to Cape Haitian is a monumental piece of work, but it is doubtful whether the Occupation had in mind the building of a great highway for the benefit of Haiti, or the construction of a military road which would facilitate the transportation of troops and supplies from one end of the island to the other. At any rate, the manner of building this road was one of the most brutal blunders made by the American Occupation in Haiti. It was built by forced labor. . . . 

The United States has absolutely failed in Haiti. It has failed to accomplish any results that justify its military Occupation of that country, and it has made it impossible for those results ever to be accomplished because of the distrust, bitterness and hatred which it has engendered in the Haitian people. Brutalities and atrocities on the part of American Marines have occurred with sufficient frequency to bring about deep resentment and terror on the part of the Haitian people. There have been needless killings of natives by marines. . . . The United States has failed in Haiti. It should get out as well and as quickly as it can and restore to the Haitian people their independence and sovereignty. The colored people of the United States should be interested in seeing that this is done, for Haiti is the one best chance that the Negro has in the world to prove that he is capable of the highest self-government. If Haiti should ultimately lose her independence, that one best chance will be lost.

Source: James Weldon Johnson, “The Truth about Haiti. An N.A.A.C.P. Investigation,” Crisis 5 (September 1920): 217–24.