Robin Mitchell | Centering Suzanne: The Enslaved Origins of Suzanne Simone Baptiste Louverture Before the Haitian Revolution

Award-winning historian Robin Mitchell (University of Buffalo) joins us to workshop a chapter from her upcoming book with Princeton University Press. Mitchell crafts the first biography of Suzanne Simon Baptiste, also known as Madame Toussaint Louverture, a heretofore neglected yet influential figure in the history of Blackness in France. Suzanne’s biography has been sidelined in histories of her husband, Toussaint Louverture, and the Haitian Revolution. In the presented chapter, Mitchell draws from “filthy papers” like slave rosters and plantation maps to unearth Suzanne’s complex personhood. 

Join us to navigate the landscape of pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue through the eyes of Suzanne Simone Baptiste.