In Progress: MICHELENA -PART TWO

by jonetta rose barras

It was hard for anyone not to notice or to resist Michelena Duclet; it had been that way all her life–from the day she was born in Haiti with green eyes and milky white skin, making difficult to determine her heritage. Her father had been a French plantation owner. Haiti had been a hotbed of rebellion. The French arrived on the island in the mid-1600s. But the Spanish initially laid claim to the territory. After some conflict between the two–French and Spanish–a treaty was signed that acknowledged France’s title to the western third of Hispaniola. That section became known as cote et isles de Saint Domingue en l’Amerique sous le vent. There were, in 1788—about a hundred years after that treaty was signed–nearly 22,000 free people of color who inhabited the island, and more than 400,000 slaves. Eventually the slaves revolted against the French and later the British. On January 1, 1804, the blacks proved the victor, gaining their independence and renaming Saint-Domingue, Haiti.

Author E.Ethelbert Miller interviews Dr. Louis Chude-Sokei, Black Scholar Magazine’s Senior Editor

E: What type of restructuring is taking place at The Black Scholar? What can readers look forward to?

Chude-Sokei: We’ve undertaken a complete restructuring but with the intention of maintaining as much as possible the iconic imagery and the consciousness of being in tune with generational transformation that made the journal so significant for so long. This being such a different generation—one made possible by what TBS and its generation achieved—our challenge is to be as relevant now as the journal always strove to be.