Res. No. 208
Title
Resolution calling on the New York City Department of Education to acknowledge the participation of Haitian soldiers in the Siege of Savannah and the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the Louisiana Purchase, by adding these events to the public schools' social studies curriculum.
Body
By Council Member Eugene
Whereas, The Republic of Haiti, located on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, was originally inhabited by the indigenous Ta?no people when Christopher Columbus established a Spanish settlement, which was the first colony in the New World, in 1492; and
Whereas, By 1550, only 150 out of hundreds of thousands Ta?no remained on the island after being subjected to forced labor, abuse, hunger, mass killings and diseases against which they had no immunity; and
Whereas, In the early 16th century, the Spanish began to forcibly transport large groups of enslaved Africans, most of whom came from Senegambia, Guinea and Congo-Angolan (Bantu) areas, to work in mines and on sugar plantations on Hispaniola; and
Whereas, By the late 17th century, following attacks by the British, Dutch and French and a devastating earthquake in 1591, much of Hispaniola had become unpopulated and the colony increasingly unprofitable, unstable, and neglected by the Spanish, who had become more concerned with extracting gold in present day Central America and Mexico; and
Whereas, In 1697, Spain officially ceded the western portion of Hispaniola to the French, who founded the colony of St. Domingue and created the modern day border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island; and
Whereas, Over the next 100 years, St. Domingue became the most profitable colony in the Americas due to its successful slave-based sugar and coffee industries, which demanded more slave labor and eventually created a 10-to-1 ratio of slaves to free people on the island; and
Whereas, More than 500 freemen from St. Domingue fought alongside the Un...
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