Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago
In Conversation with Grace Sanders Johnson
Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?
The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
Marlene Daut is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. She teaches courses in anglophone, francophone Caribbean, African American, and French Colonial and historical studies.
Grace L. Sanders Johnson is a historian, visual artist, and associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of study include modern Caribbean history, transnational feminisms, oral history, and environmental humanities. Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International (2024), Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (2023), Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (2022), American Anthropologist (2022), and Caribbean Review of Gender Studies (2018). Sanders Johnson is the author of White Gloves, Black Nation: Women, Citizenship, and Political Wayfaring in Haiti (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) which won the 2023 Haitian Studies Association Best Book Award, and honorable mention for the 2024 Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians; White Gloves, Black Nation is also one of the top 5 finalist for the 2024 African American Intellectual History Pauli Murray Book Prize and Choice Journal’s 2024 list of Outstanding Academic Titles.
The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast.
Recorded February 13, 2025
Facebook: / authorevents
Instagram: / flpauthorevents
Twitter: / authorevents
Podcast Archive: https://libwww.freelibrary.org/progra...
The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
In Conversation with Grace Sanders Johnson
Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?
The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
Marlene Daut is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. She teaches courses in anglophone, francophone Caribbean, African American, and French Colonial and historical studies.
Grace L. Sanders Johnson is a historian, visual artist, and associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of study include modern Caribbean history, transnational feminisms, oral history, and environmental humanities. Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Her most recent work can be found in several journals including Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International (2024), Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (2023), Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (2022), American Anthropologist (2022), and Caribbean Review of Gender Studies (2018). Sanders Johnson is the author of White Gloves, Black Nation: Women, Citizenship, and Political Wayfaring in Haiti (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) which won the 2023 Haitian Studies Association Best Book Award, and honorable mention for the 2024 Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History from the Organization of American Historians; White Gloves, Black Nation is also one of the top 5 finalist for the 2024 African American Intellectual History Pauli Murray Book Prize and Choice Journal’s 2024 list of Outstanding Academic Titles.
The 2024/25 Author Events Series is presented by Comcast.
Recorded February 13, 2025
Facebook: / authorevents
Instagram: / flpauthorevents
Twitter: / authorevents
Podcast Archive: https://libwww.freelibrary.org/progra...
The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.
