Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was born enslaved in Saint-Domingue, rose to be Toussaint Louverture’s chief lieutenant in the revolution, and after Toussaint’s capture led the army that drove the French out. On 1 January 1804 he proclaimed Haiti’s independence, the first nation founded by a slave revolt, and the Declaration he issued renounced France forever. The Constitution of 1805 made him emperor and declared every Haitian citizen, whatever their colour, Black. He was assassinated within two years. The lists have added him beside the American founders as a document of what liberty meant to those it had been denied.