Global Contact
Roster of Membership in the Society of Friends of Blacks, 1789
Jacques Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of Blacks in 1788 to agitate against the slave trade and slavery itself. Brissot modeled the Society on the London Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade established in 1787.
Grievance List (September 1789)
The Haitian free blacks and creoles, many of them substantial property owners and slaveholders, sent delegates to the National Assembly in France with a list of their stated grievances and demands.
The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London, 1798)
Here Pierre Joseph Laborie provides the perspective of the planter. He gives a detailed description of the organization of enslaved labor in the production of coffee.
The Slaves from Africa
The African born enslaved people brought with them to Haiti their African rituals and customs, but the white planters also tried to get them to accept French manners and mores.
The Maroons
In this passage, Moreau de Saint–Méry explains that runaways in Haiti, known as Maroons, are and have always been a persistent problem and details the tremendous efforts put into retrieving the runaways. Despite this effort, some Maroons survived and thereby regained their freedom.
That Seductive Mulatto Woman
Moreau de Saint–Méry painted a particularly negative portrait of mulatto women in Haiti. He paints Creole women as unduly promiscuous and a threat to morals and decency.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Poem, Como Duele, 1993, Women in World History
One of the earliest meditations on Malinche and her meaning published by a Chicana in the United States. This narrative explores Malinche’s fate and her abilities to negotiate difficult and competing cultural demands.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
The NYPL Digital Collection provides access to over 755,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities, including illuminated manuscripts, vintage posters, illustrated books, and printed ephemera.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project portrays the history of 13 defining migrations that formed and transformed African Americans from the 16th century to the present.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Nonfiction, Florentine Codex (Nahuatl)
This chapter from the Florentine Codex, a bilingual encyclopedia of central Mexican life and history, was created by the Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún and indigenous advisors, painters and scribes.