104 Years, Cannibalism Is Rampant in the Collapsing Black-Run Nation Back before the United States of America entry into The Great War, the US Marines engaged in an occupation of Haiti. This started in 1915. By 1920, black leaders in America were particularly worried about what this occupation by an unapologetically white nation (recall, Birth of a Nation had been released in 1915 and was a monumental success) symbolically meant, since Haiti was birthed in the blood of the white French that black slaves had murdered as they created the first black republic.
Yes, the Constitution of 1805 explicitly made Haiti a black republic.
Thus, the collapse of Haiti and white people from America emerging as a force for order – whereas explicit black power had been the primary mover of the government since black slaves revolted and killed all the white people on the island – was of grave concern to the nascent NAACP. Enter a historic document forever demonstrating that blacks in America knew what the collapse of Haiti meant for black people worldwide (hint: the confirmation of every stereotype of the unfitness for blacks to govern independently of colonial masters). Yes, this is the conclusion of James Weldon Johnson, a black man who visited Haiti early on into the US Marine occupation of the island. [James Weldon Johnson, “The Truth about Haiti. An N.A.A.C.P. Investigation.” Crisis 5 (September 1920): 217–224.]: