Peniel E. Joseph, Special to CNN
- Haiti’s poverty has been much discussed since its massive earthquake, but little has been said of its rich, and equally fraught, history.
For African-Americans, Haiti’s tragedy hits close to home. For more than two centuries the tiny, at times fragile, republic has inspired black political activism in the United States.
Born of the influence of the French and American revolutions, Haiti, once prized as the jewel of the French Empire, changed the course of its history by engineering a revolution that startled the world.
Once a colony of slaves under French rule in the 18th century, Haiti transformed itself into the first black republic and one of the first nations in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery.
