Haiti History Slavery Enriched Popes Kings Queens

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Jean Saint-Vil wrote in, August 11, 2009:
The British tried to falsify history." In 2007 her British Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her beloved subjects deemed it most proper to commemorate the efforts of one
William Wilberforce whose 1807 Act, they say, is an earth-shattering
accomplishment for the cause of abolition.

Unfortunately for the
royals, a number of voices disturbed the harmonious chorus they had
come to expect from their loyal subjects.

Some of them stood up and
reminded the world that well over three years before 1807, the Haitian
General Jean-Jacques Dessalines had proclaimed and verily invested in
the abolition of racial slavery after having defeated, among others,
the British army. Within England itself, an organization named Operation Truth 2007 worked tirelessly to counter the shameful attempts of the British State to falsify history[23].

Publications after publications were presented to adequately document
how the so-called 2007 commemorations were serving to purposefully
suppress the role Africans had played in the abolition of racial
slavery while, at the same time, grossly exaggerating the dubious
contributions to the same by folks like Wilberforce.[24] "

Jean Saint-Vil wrote in, August 11, 2009
" There was a time, not so long ago, when popes, kings and queens enriched
themselves and built vast empires on the profits made with the sweat
and blood of kidnapped men, women and children loaded on ships, stacked
like sardines and reduced to slavery on plantations of coffee, sugar,
cotton, cocoa, all over the Americas[1].

From the 1444 Portuguese attacks against the coast of Africa, followed by the 1452 papal bull of pope Nicholas V[2] which invited Christians to attack and enslave non-Christians, to the
faithful year of 1791, millions of human beings had already been
kidnapped, terrorized, thrown to sharks in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean.

Immediately upon arrival on the islands or the mainland, they
were worked to death, tortured, eaten alive by dogs that were
especially trained to feed on African flesh or they were blown to
pieces with ignited gun powder shoved into their sexual parts by
British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonizers.

It
has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th
century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had this
catastrophe known as the MAAFA not taken place[3].

It is within such an atmosphere of unparalleled terrorism and human
decadence that a remarkable gathering of men and women took place on
the small Caribbean island of Haiti, the evening of August 14-15, 1791.
Known as the Bwa Kay Iman Ceremony[4], [27]
it is said that this revolutionary meeting brought together
representatives of twenty-one displaced African nations who vowed to
revolt against the powers that had unleashed against their people such
a relentless campaign of terror; a genocide that was expertly conceived
and implemented, state-sponsored and financed, justified with numerous
literary works and blessed by the most powerful and influential
religious institutions of the day[5].

The Bwa Kay Iman uprising of 1791 was not the first major revolt against
racial slavery in the Americas.

Rather, it was the culmination of years
of organized struggle.

Singular only in its successful conclusion, Bwa
Kay Iman counts among its main leaders a lady named Cecile Fatiman[6] and a gentleman called Boukman[7].

The lady, herself a former slave and a Vodou Priest, was said to be born of an African mother and a European father (a Corsican Prince).

Boukman, also a Vodou Priest, was said to have been formerly enslaved
on the island of Jamaica, before being sold to a plantation in Haiti.

The following prayer has been attributed to Boukman officiating at the Bwa Kay Iman ceremony: "The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light.

The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer.

The white man's god asks him to commit crimes.

But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs.

It's He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory.

It's He who
will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men's
god who is so pitiless.

Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in
all our hearts."[8]
Honoring their Bwa Kay Iman pledge, the Africans of Haiti launched an all out
war against the armies of France, Britain and Spain which they would
eventually defeat, thanks to the military savvy of the maroons and the
apt leadership of Generals Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion and Henry Christophe.

The revolted
Africans also counted among them fierce women warriors like Sanite
Bélair, Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière and the aged Toya Mantou, aunt of
General Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

Twelve years after the Bwa Kay Iman uprising, General Dessalines would outwit French Generals Leclerc (Napoleon Bonaparte's brother-in-law ) and his
particularly unscrupulous successor Donatien Rochambeau[9].

Dessalines would successfully chase the last European slave makers out of the island, on November 18, 1803. The resounding victory achieved by the revolted Africans would force Napoleon to abandon his dream of building a French empire (fueled by racial slavery) in the Americas.

It is no coincidence that in the very
year Haiti defeated Napoleon's army, the United States of America was
able to acquire Louisiana from the French, thus doubling its territory,
for merely 81 million Francs.

Three years later, fearing slave
uprisings on its American colonies, the British would pass an act
declaring it illegal to transport more kidnapped Africans into the
Americas[10].

During a 2003 interview offered to the author of this article, esteemed American physician and author Paul Farmer commented that, more
certainly so than for the 1969 moon landing, he considers the Haitian Revolution to be "a giant step for mankind".

Indeed, the grave consequences that were to follow the climatic conclusion of Bwa Kay
Iman, were not lost to the world at the beginning of the 19th century.

Barely days after the creation of the Republic of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines published a decree in which he announced his intention to devote part of the nation's meager post-war budget to securing the emancipation of formerly enslaved human beings.

Many American slave ship captains collected the 40 dollars payment Dessalines had reserved for the release of each formerly enslaved person who sets foot on Haitian soil [11].

Meanwhile, in 1805, French foreign minister Prince Charles Talleyrand wrote to U.S Secretary of State James Madison: "the existence of a Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations." The United States responded by banning trade with Haiti in 1806. The embargo was renewed in 1807 and 1809. Later, in 1825, with the help of other white powers of the time, France began extorting a ransom which would eventually amount to 90 million gold francs from the young Black Republic.[12]

To justify the exorbitant Charles X Ransom, the French offered the same
"logic" the British would use to justify compensating former White
slave makers who were dispossessed of "their human property" following
the emancipation proclamation.[13]

The Haitian Revolution gave impetus for African uprisings all over the
Americas.

Gabriel Posser, Nataniel Turner, Denmark Vessey, were all
Haiti-inspired revolutionaries who sent cold shivers to the spine of
American slave makers[14].Yet, for several years, racial slavery would persist everywhere in the Americas, save Haiti.

When she provided shelter and assistance to Miranda (1806) and Bolivar
(1815, 1816), Haiti's sole request was that all enslaved Africans be
freed wherever the South-American revolutionaries would be victorious.

Haitians were often accused of fueling anti-slavery rebellion in the
Americas.

Routinely, European powers would send warships to intimidate
and collect ransom from them, on account of suspected Haitian
complicity in uprisings happening in the region[15].

Despite the collective punishment through repetitive acts of extortion
(dubbed "gunboat diplomacy") that the crippled Black Republic suffered
at the hands of its historical enemies, late into the 19th
century, Haiti was still making notable, albeit suicidal, contributions
to human dignity and freedom.

Few people know for instance that José
Marti, founder of the Cuban State, was provided a Haitian passport to
facilitate his revolutionary travels.

It is believed that, in fact,
Marti died a Haitian citizen[16].

Eventually, it became financially and politically unprofitable for the Europeans to maintain the system of racial slavery in the Americas.

By 1833, the
British had abolished slavery on their colonies, including Canada.

Then, the French followed suite in 1848, the United States of
North-America in1862 and eventually the Spanish and the Portuguese in
1886 and 1888.

The 1791 step (to uproot racial slavery) was taken in Haiti, not by human giants but by regular
men and women.

In fact, they were deemed to be "the wretched of the
earth".

A people who, despite being subjected to hundreds of years of
systematic torture aimed at breaking the human spirit, had stoically
risen up to rescue itself from the jaws of genocide.

By so doing, they
elevated us all to higher spiritual grounds and offered to our heart's
eyes yet unforeseen human possibilities.

Besides the shear physical
terror, religion and the falsification of history top the list of
powerful tools that were used to try to crush the human (African)
spirit on the slave plantation.

The damage caused to the African psyche
by the recurring sermons of priests such as Father Labbat and Father
Fauque de Cayenne are described in Jean Fouchard's "Les marrons de la
liberté"[17].

The tragic case of Scipio Africanus is illustrative of the disastrous
damage that Christian brainwashing was indeed inflicting to enslaved
Africans, some of whom would end up accepting racial slavery as their
God-ordained fate, due to the very fact of being African[18].

Professor Ron Karenga describes the collective loss suffered by the Human race as a result of the MAAFA when he notes how "the destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among peoples"

The 1791 uprising in Haiti forced the world to take a giant step upward.

Within the span of these twelve years of revolution, we sprang up from
the pits of inhumanity were we had stagnated since the 15th century to the - yet unattained but now foreseeable -possibilities of genuine human brotherhood and sisterhood[19].

218 years later, it is evident that this giant jump upward remains
insufficient to catapult us where we aught to be as a highly
intelligent species.

Thus, it is important that we commemorate Bwa Kay
Iman and allow ourselves to be inspired to build - together- the better
world to which we all aspire.

So, we are not there yet!
But, what have we done with the possibilities we've been offered since 1791?

It would be short sighted to think this question ought to be pondered
only by the sons and daughters of Boukman.

We all need the inspiration
of 1791 to garner courage: the courage to fight barbarism and triumph
over terrorism; the courage to face history, learn its tough lessons
pertaining to the price of freedom and the value of justice.

We need
courage to recognize and capture the possibilities offered to make
amend where amend is due and to enact, real, positive change in our
world, today.

The World Conference against racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance, Durban South-Africain 2001 was a missed opportunity [21],[22].

And 2007 was yet another opportunity which we missed to deal courageously
with the lasting scars that the MAAFA has left on humanity[25].

Then came 2008! Surely, you must have heard the good news. The day has
finally come and, this time, it is dubbed "Change we can believe".

The
face of change in 2008 is tall, dark and, according to Berlusconi,
handsome.

Of mixed European and African heritage, like Haiti's Grann
Iman (Cécile Fatiman) of Bwa Kay Iman fame, the new Superstar President
of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, is in charge.

He
is the "change" who shall make everything right, just so. Or so, many
seem to think! Since his remarkable and inspiring meteoric rise to
power, Obama, who recently returned from a quick tour of fatherland
Africa, has done everything possible to avoid uttering the words
REPARATIONS.

He may, after all, not get deposed in a coup d'état. To
arrive with his beautiful black family in the White House, he was also
compelled to disavow his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who carelessly
uttered one too many inconvenient truths, at the wrong time, about the
invisible American Elephant - lingering white supremacist racism that
permeates society.

Thus far, through the magic of words and, more
recently, "beer diplomacy", Obama has been able to manoeuvre a path
out, on the perilous landscape of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming's
imperfect union.

We recognize that the Barack is indeed good at
what he does! However, it is too early to ascertain whether President
Obama will have made enough baby steps, if any at all, in the direction
of the restorative justice that our world so urgently and so seriously
needs.

A few days ago, in the midst of a nasty coup d'état in Honduras, a bloody
terror campaign in Afghanistan, and fake elections in UN-occupied
Haiti, someone who truly cares about my mental health attempted to
distract me with a good-news rumour: "the U.S. State Department, he
claims, is about to announce the nomination of Dr. Paul Farmer as head
of U.S.A.I.D." Yes, the white guy who said he felt happy and privileged
to join Haitians for the bicentennial celebration of their now
impoverished Abolitionist Republic! The rare American who is not of
African descent but feels justified to describe Bwa Kay Iman as "a
giant step for mankind"; this unorthodox Harvard-graduated medical
doctor who has spent over twenty years serving the most vulnerable in
Haiti and Rwanda; Paul Farmer of Partners in Health and author of The Uses of Haiti; that guy! He was to be named at the helm of the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID).

That is: the same USAID that has
consistently financed the overthrow of progressive governments in the
Americas, under the guise of aid for "correction démocratique"?

Now, this is what I would call a great step, at least for the United States
of America! But, as quickly as we were led to give this wild rumour
serious thought, we received indication that it is too soon to dream
that the U.S. State Department has become tired of investing in
dead-aid and is now ready to consider life and human dignity as worthy
targets of USAID investments[26].

How many possibilities have we already missed in 2009?

What has a man or woman gained if s/he has conquered the world but lost his/her soul?

I invite you to look with me toward the inspiring lives of Grann Iman and
Boukman to answer these questions while I wish you a Happy Bwa Kay Iman
celebration! Jafrikayiti (Jean Saint-Vil)
was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and currently lives in
Canada..

Saint-Vil is Deputy Director at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada and holds a B.Sc. (Hon. Biology) degree from the
University of Waterloo.

[1]
Speaking of John Hawkins, historian Walter Rodney writes: "On returning
to England after the first trip, his profit was so handsome that Queen
Elizabeth I became interested in directly participating in his next
venture ; and she provided for that purpose a ship named the Jesus.

Hawkins left with the Jesus to steal some more Africans, and he
returned to England with such dividends that Queen Elizabeth made him a
knight.

Hawkins chose as his coat of arms the representation of an
African in chains" How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney, 1972

[2] Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum
Diversas on 18 June, 1452 which reads as follows: "We
weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting
that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other
things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso -- to
invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and
pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and
the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all
movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and
to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and
appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms,
counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to
convert them to his and their use and profit -- by having secured the
said faculty, the said King Alfonso, or, by his authority, the
aforesaid infante, justly and lawfully has acquired and possessed, and
doth possess, these islands, lands, harbors, and seas, and they do of
right belong and pertain to the said King Alfonso and his successors".

[3] The word '''Maafa'''
(also know as the African Holocaust) is derived from a (Kiswahili) word
meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy.

The term today
collectively refers to the Pan-African study of the 500 hundred years
of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery,
Imperialism, Colonialism, Oppression, Invasions and Exploitation

[4] Bwa Kay Iman is
the site of the Vodou ceremony presided over by Boukman and Cecile
Fatiman on August 14, 1791. It is widely accepted as the starting point
for the Haitian Revolution.

It is located in the northern Morne Rouge
region of Haiti, southwest of Cap Haïtien.

Some suggest that the site
derives its name from the French "Bois Caiman" or Alligator's wood.
Others suggest instead a Kreyol derived name "Bwa Kay Iman" or "woods
by the house of Iman".

[5]
There was the presumption of a divine legitimacy in the corporeal
system of subjugation and oppression, a system which was motivated and
maintained by greed and ignorance and only excused with Christianity,
and sometimes even with the idea of, to some extent, Christianizing a
"heathen" people.

Some defenders of slavery in the United States' South
in the antebellum period, for instance, argued that blacks in the
United States were becoming "elevated, from the degrading slavery of
savage heathenism to the participation in civilization and
Christianity" (Conser, Walter H. God and the Natural World: Religion
and Science in Antebellum America.

1993, page 120. ).

Cited on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maafa
[6]
"Cecile Fatiman, the wife of Louis Michel Pierrot, who led a black
battalion at Vertieres and later became president of Haiti, took part
in the Bois Caiman ceremony: she was a mambo [Vodou priestess].

The
daughter of an African woman and of a Corsican prince, Cecile Fatiman
was a mulatto with green eyes and long black silky hair, who was sold
into slavery with her mother in Saint Domingue.

The mother also had two
sons who disappeared without a trace on the auction block.

Cecile
Fatiman lived in the Cape until the age of 112, in full possession of
her mental ability.

Source: Etienne Charlier's "Apercu sur la formation
historique de la nation haitienne" (1954)
[7]
Boukman (also Boukmann, Dutty Boukman or Zamba Boukman) was a leader of the rebellion in its initial stages.

He had come to Haiti by way of
Jamaica, then to become a maroon in the forest of Morne Rouge.

Giant,
powerful, fierce and fearsome, he was an inspiring leader.

[8] Proposed English
translation of Boukman's Prayer on theLouvertureProject.org
[9]
French General Donatien Rochambeau is infamous for his use of human (African)-eating dogs trained in Cuba. The animal were sent to to island without food rations with expressed order from Napoleon that
they be fed exclusively human flesh.

See La férocité blanche: génocides occultés de 1492 à nos jours - Amelia Pumelle-Uribe
[10]
William Wilberforce, who inspired the British Act of 1807 wrote a
pamphlet in that same year in which he declared: "It would be wrong to
emancipate (the enslaved Africans).

To grant freedom to them
immediately would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their
own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom Truth be
told, there were compelling military and economic imperatives that
pushed Britain to adopt the 1807 Act, which merely rendered the
so-called "trade" illegal but failed to abolish racial slavery on
British territory.

Over a million captured Africans were still regarded
by the British Government as legal human property and forcibly held
captive for over another two decades.

Following the 1807 Act, the
British Navy imposed on slaving ship captains a fine of 100 pounds per
enslaved person found aboard.

This also meant that thousands upon
thousands of Africans were thrown to the sharks by slavers who
attempted to avoid the fine. How much did the British Government profit
from these fines?

[11] It is remarkable that an obviously unsympathetic white missionary entered in his "BRIEF HISTORY OF DESSALINES FROM 1825 MISSIONARY JOURNAL" the little known fact that Dessalines published a proclamation, offering to the captains of American vessels
the sum of forty dollars for each individual native or black man of
colour, whom they should convey back to Hayti.

The actual proclamation,
dated January 14, 1804, reads as follows: « Liberté où la mort! Gouvernement d'Haiti, Quartier général, le 14 janvier 1804, première
année de l'indépendance d'Haiti.

Le gouverneur-général, considérant
qu'un grand nombre de noirs et d'hommes de couleurs supportent, aux
Etats-Unis, toutes sortes de privations, parce qu'ils n'ont pas les
moyens de retourner en Haiti, décrète qu'il sera compté aux capitaines
de navires américains la somme de quarante piastres pour chaque
individu qu'ils pourront ramener dans le pays. Ce décret sera imprimé,
publié, aussitôt expédié, et une copie en sera immédiatement envoyés au
Congrès des Etats-Unis.

Le Gouverneur Général, Dessalines»
[12] The Charles X
Ransom, initially established at 150 million Francs by the French was extorted at gunpoint from Haiti between 1825 and 1947.
[13] MICHAELLE JEAN CALLED TO MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD: (British Crown to Pay Long Overdue Reparations) by Jafrikayiti, April 7, 2007
[14]
In 1822, the murmur of freedom and equality circulating among
Charleston's black population turned to action, as Vesey hatched a plot
for a slave uprising.

More than 9,000 slaves and free blacks were
attracted to Vesey's plot to "liberate" the city of Charleston.

Denmark
Vesey and his co-conspirators had been in touch with then-President
Boyer of Haiti.

Indeed, one of Vesey's lieutenants, Monday Gell, had
written two letters to the president of Haiti seeking support for the
planned insurrection.

ipoaa.com/denmark_vesey__and_his_co.htm

[15]
July1861: Spanish gun-boat aggression against Haiti--At issue: Haitian
support to Dominican generals Cabral and Sanchez who were resisting
attempted Spanish annexation of Dominican Republic.

Spanish Admiral
Rubalcava collects $200,000 ransom and 21-gun salute from Haitian
President Fabre Nicholas Géffrard.

1861-1865:
Spain annexes neighboring Dominican Republic by invitation of its white
and mulatto minority: Fearing a return of slavery on the island, Haiti
helps anti-Spanish forces to regain Dominican Republic's independence.

1872:
German gun-boat aggression against Haiti.

Commodore Basch collects 3000
Sterling Pounds from the Haitian government and defames Haitian flag
with German excrement.

1877:
March: French gun-boat aggression against Haiti.

At issue: resumption
of payments on the 1825 ransom--balance then re-estimated at 20 million
Francs-or. December: Repeat of Spanish gun-boat aggression against
Haiti.

At issue: Suspected Haitian assistance to rebels fighting to
abolish slavery in Cuba.
August 1883: In the midst of popular riots in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, diplomatic representatives of France, Britain, Germany,
Belgium, Spain, Holland, Norway and Sweden sign ultimatum threatening
Haitian President Lysius Féllicité Salomon of bombarding Haiti's
National Palace.

See Time to Stop Resisting Haiti's Resistance by Jean Saint-Vil, November 2002

[16]
During a recent August 2009 visit to Cuba, a Haitian friend informed
the author that his Cuban host were proud to assert the little known
fact that Haiti had provided a passport to the founding father of their
nation, thus facilitating his struggle for independence (from Spain)
[17]
"Souvenez-vous, mes chers enfants, leur disais-je, que quoi que vous
soyez esclaves, vous êtes cependant chrétiens comme vos maîtres; que ...

ceux qui ne vivent pas chrétiennement tombent après leur mort dans les
enfers.

...Quels malheur pour vous si, après avoir été les esclaves des
hommes en ce monde et dans le temps vous deveniez esclaves du démon
pendant toute l'éternité.

Ce malheur pourtant vous arrivera
infailliblement si vous ne vous rangez pas à votre devoir puisque vous
êtes dans un état habituel de damnation: car, sans parler du tort que
vous faites à vos maîtres en les privant de votre travail...

vous
n'approchez point des sacrements...Venez à moi mes chers amis".

Pè Fauque de Cayenne ki ap preche, Les marrons de la liberté, p.504 Jean Fouchard, Editions de l'école, 1972.

[18] The grave of Scipio Africanus...Scipio Africanus (1702 - 21 December 1720) was a slave born to unknown parents from West Africa He is remembered because of the elaborate grave, consisting of painted headstone and footstone, in the churchyard of St Mary's in Henbury,
which is a grade II listed building.[1] Both stones feature black
cherubs and the footstone bears the unusual epitaph:
I who was Born a PAGAN and a SLAVE
Now sweetly sleep a CHRISTIAN in my Grave
What tho' my hue was dark my SAVIOR'S sight
Shall Change this darkness into radiant Light
Such grace to me my Lord on earth has given
To recommend me to my Lord in heaven
Whose glorious second coming here I wait
With saints and Angels him to celebrate
It is thought that 10,000 black slaves and servants were in Britain in the
early 18th century, but this is one of the very few memorials to them
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

[19] Not only were slaves disallowed legal marriage and forbidden any
American religious and civil proceedings, but also their tribal
ceremonies were not permitted or honored Children were not raised among
their own parents, who were themselves never formally united in union;
and children were often sold away. Boyd-Franklin, Nancy.

Black Families
in Therapy, Second Edition: Understanding the African American
Experience.

2006, page 7-8

[20] The World Conference against racism, racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related intolerance, Durban South-Africa - August 31, 2001 to September 7, 2001
[21]
Conventional western historical narratives have frequently been
criticized as anti-African or Eurocentric, for instance in regards to
viewing centuries of persecution and disenfranchisement as a side
effect of commercial enterprise.

Prejudicial accounts of African
societies, cultures, languages and peoples by Western scholars abound,
with African and African Diaspora voices often muted or relegated to
the periphery.

Until the 1960s, African Americans suffered from what
one historian deemed "historical invisibility".

Fredrickson, George M.
The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and
Social Inequality.

1988, page 112.

[23] Operation TRUTH 2007
is a Pan Afrikan, Afrikan led campaign to highlight objections to any
activities which recognises and endorses the year 1807 as being
positively significant to people of Afrikan descent.

[24]
According to the historical record, "not only did Wilberforce disagree
that enslaved Africans should be freed immediately, but he actively
sought to undermine the Haitian revolution that led to the freedom of
enslaved Africans".

See 2008 online debate titled: Was William Wilberforce a freedom fighter?

[25] My protest was born of anger,
not madness explains Toyin Agbetu in The Guardian, Tuesday 3 April 2007
[26] Paul Farmer out for USAID?

Several Hill and Washington foreign policy hands say they are hearing from the
White House that Paul Farmer is out as a candidate to lead USAID, a
decision that was said to have been made at the White House.

It wasn't
clear what the reason was, and a representative of Farmer's group,
Partners in Health, couldn't immediately be reached.

Bayo, August 12 2009, 10:02 PM

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