On my way to Haiti this summer, I stopped in Savannah for the Fourth of July, and was surprised to see this politically oriented monument to soldiers from St. Domingue fighting in the Revolutionary War. A USA Today article here profiles the effort to establish this memorial, and a more in-depth look at the politics of this can be found on the Corbett Haiti site.
This is interesting for several reasons, but for the purposes of this blog focusing on representation, this statement by Daniel Fils-Aime, chairman of the Haitian American Historical Society is particularly telling - "This is a testimony to tell people we Haitians didn't come from the boat...We were here in 1779 to help America win independence. That recognition is overdue."
Apparently the legacy of the media-propelled Haitian boat people stereotype casts a longer shadow than this physical monument that I stumbled upon during that weekend.
