“Haiti and the Civil War” presentation at MPAAGHS Monthly Meeting

July 12, 2025

Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society (MPAAGHS) will hold its monthly meeting virtually on Saturday, July 12, 2025, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. The meeting will feature a talk by Marvin Tupper Jones entitled “Haiti and the Civil War.”

The American Civil War is sometimes called the second Haitian Revolution. For both events, slavery was the driving force and Black armies took part. For more than sixty years, pro-enslavers feared Haiti, while the enslaved and abolitionists found great hope from Toussaint Louverture and Haiti. Marvin Tupper Jones will detail the actions of the enslaved and abolitionists who were encouraged by the Haitian Revolution as well as Haiti’s own involvement in offering freedom to people of color.

To America’s benefit, the Haitian Revolution even forced Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the Louisiana Territory. American leaders who wrote, spoke of and acted due to their admiration for Louverture include: John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney, Gabriel Prosser, Charlotte Forten, William Lloyd Garrison, Prince Hall, John Mercer Langston, Wendell Phillips, Senator Charles Sumner, Denmark Vesey, and David Walker. Many African Americans today are descended from those who saw Haiti as a guiding light.

Marvin Tupper Jones, a documentary photographer and filmmaker, is the Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group (CDG), a research, documentation, preservation, and presentation organization. Among the CDG’s accomplishments are eight documentaries, fifteen historical markers, a touring exhibition, a stage presentation, articles, conference panels, lectures and awards for its historical work. Early in Marvin’s career he documented Haitian forts for UNESCO. Twenty-one of his relatives of color served in the second Haitian Revolution. Visit Jones’ Chowan Discovery Group.

Contributions to MPAAGHS’ Stewart Sisters highway marker fund and MPAAGHS 2025 dues ($25) may be paid electronically via MPAAGHS’s Payments webpage or by mailing checks made payable to MPAAGHS to:
MPAAGHS
4114 Tidewater Trail
Jamaica, VA 23079

Highway marker contributors will be listed on the marker dedication program unless they ask to remain anonymous.

If you are not on our email list and would like to receive an invitation for this virtual meeting or to get further information about MPAAGHS, call 804.758.5163. Another way to subscribe to the email list is to submit your email address to us via our contacts information form.