L'Ouverture

Yellow fever, he said, gave local armies—such as the one Toussaint L’Ouverture commanded over for Haiti’s liberation—a crucial edge over invaders with immune systems that were new to the virus.

In “Toussaint,” a completed 1961 scene from her play in progress about the Haitian general and freedom fighter Toussaint L’Ouverture, Hansberry claims her identity as, in Colbert’s words, a “freedom writer.”

One 1997 print, “The Burning,” depicted a scene from the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.

That includes the comedy, as when Tendayi Kuumba’s Lady in Brown slips into the character of a bookish Black 8-year-old who, in the summer of 1955, conjures an imaginary friend: the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.

When we think about Haiti, we think about this impoverished place, this place where there’s always turmoil, but it had a revolution led by one of the most remarkable leaders in Toussaint L’Ouverture.