Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History by CLR James
Slave revolts in the American South were put down with savagery by white masters fearful from memories of Haiti. In 1791, the enslaved of that French plantation colony rose in bloody revolt, fighting a long war that resulted in the world’s first Black republic.
In 1936 that story was told in a play by C.L.R. James starring Paul Robeson as rebel leader Toussaint Louverture. The play, long thought to be lost, was rediscovered and transformed into a graphic novel by British artists Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee. Their black and white drawings capture the drama of an abused population and the determination of French settlers, regardless of the revolution in their homeland, to deny Liberty, Equality and Fraternity to the Africans whose labor made their colony the wealthiest prize of the Caribbean.
