Leader of the Haitian Revolution, who founded the first Black republic
The leader of the Haitian independence movement, himself born a slave. In the late eighteenth century the Black slaves of French Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) rose in the only successful large-scale slave revolt in human history, and Louverture emerged through outstanding military and political skill, leading former slaves to defeat the armies of France, Spain, and Britain, abolish slavery, and establish self-rule. He made the French Revolution’s slogan of "liberty and equality" real for those most deeply oppressed. Though he himself was lured into capture by Napoleon and died in a French prison, the revolution he lit finally gave birth to the world’s first Black republic founded by former slaves — Haiti.
The French Revolution cried "liberty, equality, fraternity," yet still kept slavery in the colonies. Louverture and the slaves of Saint-Domingue seized on the contradiction, demanding through revolt: does "all are born equal" not include us? They defeated some of the strongest European armies of the day and brought the ideal down to the very bottom — slaves for the first time smashed their own chains by their own strength.
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