From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964

4. “What Happens in Haiti Has Repercussions Which Far Transcend Haiti Itself ”: Walter White, Haiti and the Public Relations Campaign, 1947–1955

4 “What Happens in Haiti Has Repercussions Which Far Transcend Haiti Itself” Walter White, Haiti and the Public Relations Campaign, 1947–1955 Sightseeing . . . shopping for incredible bargains . . . dancing . . . swimming . . . lazing . . . looking . . . filling your eyes with the beauty of Haiti’s tropical and mountain foliage, moonlight on the sea, palms and pines. . . . All this awaits you—only four short hours from Miami. Haiti Tourist Information Bureau, 1953 Haiti is really a heaven land . . . where it’s always spring—warm sun and cool trade winds . . . tropical flowers and Alpine mountain views . . . the best food west of Paris, by the way . . . a new International Casino . . . sailing, spear-fishing . . . trips into history by burro-back, or Cadillac. Make your reservations early. Haiti Tourist Information Bureau, 1953 On September 20, 1947, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White wrote to Joseph D. Charles, Haitian ambassador to the United States, outlining his recommendations to transform Haiti’s public image. According to White’s memorandum, U.S. perceptions of Haiti as a “poverty-stricken, illiterate , hopelessly backward country whose people are little removed from the jungle and practically all of whom practice voodoo” posed significant challenges to strengthening Haiti/U.S. relations and, inevitably, to the Caribbean nation’s advancement as well.1 White asserted that Haiti needed a calculated overhaul of key facets of its image—political, economic and cultural. Once his plans were implemented and carried out and their results publicized throughout the international arena, Haiti’s public relations (PR) campaign would prove essential to Haiti’s subsequent progress and improved role in inter-American affairs. Since Haiti’s independence from European colonial powers in 1804, the black republic had remained a symbol of African American resistance and potentiality for self-government; 132 · From Douglass to Duvalier thus, Haiti’s progress exemplified the achievements of African-descended peoples in the realms of self-government and economic and social development . With the aid of the Haitian government, his future wife Poppy Cannon and private and public support, Walter White served as one of the leading U.S. African American figures who contested the dominant racialized readings of Haiti by presenting to the world a more refined and positive image of the black republic. In this chapter, I contend that Walter White’s PR campaign paralleled U.S. policy objectives of mutual cooperation and financial and technical assistance in the Caribbean and Latin America. In spite of the secretary’s accord with U.S. policies, specifically the objectives of Harry Truman’s Point Four Program and other inter-American projects rooted in the political ideology of U.S. Pan Americanism, White confronted U.S. hegemony of Haitian affairs, believing that an economically empowered and politically stable Haiti could profoundly affect U.S. African American advancement in Cold War America. However, despite his optimism and determination, White and Haitian officials’ focus on developing tourism as a main springboard of the public relations campaign proved ineffective to the advancement and training of the Haitian masses. The goals of the public relations campaign were inspired and ultimately compromised by a program of racial uplift, foreign ownership and underdevelopment in Haiti. Scholars of U.S/Latin American relations have typically interpreted U.S. Pan Americanism as an imperial project that intended to expand U.S. political and economic influence in the region.2 Absent from most of the scholarly literature on Pan Americanism have been the voices of U.S. African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and Afro-Latin Americans, who both criticized and praised U.S. policies. Likewise, discussions of Pan Americanism have largely ignored the joint programs embarked upon by U.S. African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and Afro-Latin Americans. Including these alternate perspectives of the discussion of U.S. Pan Americanism, particularly those perspectives that surfaced amid widespread struggles against U.S. intervention in the Americas, antiblack prejudices and the dilution of black radical leadership, reveals the centrality of race and racial equality in the landscape of inter-American affairs. Within the larger context of the NAACP’s focus on independence struggles in Africa and Asia and also U.S. African American civil rights, White emphasized the futility of hemispheric unity and the failure of Pan American programs if the United States did not confront the systemic racism against blacks at home and abroad. What Happens in Haiti Transcends Haiti Itself · 133 Acting on his beliefs and in full collaboration with the Haitian government , White launched an inter-American PR...