A French propaganda engraving from 1825 depicts King Charles X bestowing freedom on a Black man kneeling before him in chains. ‘S.M. Charles X, le bien-aimé, reconnaissant l’indépendance de St. Domingue,’ 1825, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cabinet des Estampes, CC BY-SAMarlene L. Daut, Yale University In 2002, Haiti’s former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide argued that France should pay his country US$21 billion. The reason? In 1825, France extracted a huge indemnity from the young nation, in exchange for recognition of its independence. April 17, 2025, marks the 200th anniversary of that indemnity agreement. On Jan. 1 of this year, the now-former president of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Leslie Voltaire, reminded France of this call when he requested that France “repay the debt of independence and reparations for slavery.” In March, tennis star Naomi Osaka, who is of Haitian descent, added her voice to the chorus in a tweet wondering when France would pay Haiti back. As a scholar of 19th-century Haitian history and culture, I’ve dedicated a significant portion of my research to exploring Haiti’s particularly strong legal case for restitution from France. The story begins with the Haitian Revolution. France instituted slavery in the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island of Hispaniola – today’s Haiti – in the 17th century. In the late 18th century, the enslaved population rebelled and eventually declared independence. In the 19th century, the French demanded compensation for the former enslavers of the Haitian people, rather than the other way around. Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross economic disparity between Black and white Americans, the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay – referred to as an “indemnity” at the time – severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper.
The cost of independence
Haiti officially declared its independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804. In October 1806, following the assassination of Haiti’s first head of state, the country was split into two, with Alexandre Pétion ruling in the south and Henry Christophe ruling in the north. Despite the fact that both Haiti rulers were veterans of the Haitian Revolution, the French had never quite given up on reconquering their former colony. In 1814, King Louis XVIII, restored as king after the overthrow of Napoléon earlier that year, sent three commissioners to Haiti to assess the willingness of the country’s rulers to surrender. Christophe, crowned king in 1811, remained obstinate in the face of France’s exposed plan to bring back slavery. Threatening war, the most prominent member of Christophe’s cabinet, Baron de Vastey, insisted,“ Our independence will be guaranteed by the tips of our bayonets!” In contrast, Pétion, the ruler of the south, was willing to negotiate, hoping that the country might be able to pay France for recognition of its independence. In 1803, Napoléon had sold Louisiana to the United States for US$15 million. Using this number as his compass, Pétion proposed paying the same amount. Unwilling to compromise with those he viewed as “runaway slaves,” Louis XVIII rejected the offer. Pétion died suddenly in 1818, but Jean-Pierre Boyer, his successor, kept up the negotiations. Talks, however, continued to stall due to Christophe’s stubborn opposition. “Any indemnification of the ex-colonists,” Christophe’s government stated, was “inadmissible.” Once Christophe died in October 1820, Boyer was able to reunify the two sides of the country. However, even with the obstacle of Christophe gone, Boyer repeatedly failed to successfully negotiate France’s recognition of independence. Determined to gain at least suzerainty over the island – which would have made Haiti a protectorate of France – Louis XVIII rebuked the two commissioners Boyer sent to Paris in 1824 to try to negotiate an indemnity in exchange for recognition. On April 17, 1825, Charles X, brother to Louis XVIII and the new French king, performed a sudden about-face. Charles X issued a decree stating that France would recognize Haitian independence but only at the price of 150 million francs – or nearly twice the 80 million francs the U.S. had paid for the Louisiana territory. Baron de Mackau, whom Charles X sent to deliver the ordinance, arrived in Haiti in July, accompanied by a squadron of 14 brigs of war carrying more than 500 cannons. His instructions stated that his “mission” was “not a negotiation.” It was not diplomacy either. It was extortion. Amid the threat of violent war and a looming economic blockade, on July 11, 1825, Boyer signed the fatal document, which stated, “The present inhabitants of the French part of St. Domingue shall pay … in five equal installments … the sum of 150,000,000 francs, destined to indemnify the former colonists.”
French prosperity built on Haitian poverty
Newspaper articles from the period reveal that the French king knew the Haitian government was hardly capable of making these payments, as the amount was nearly six times Haiti’s total annual revenue. The rest of the world seemed to agree that the agreement was absurd. One British journalist noted that the “enormous price” constituted a “sum which few states in Europe could bear to sacrifice.” Forced to borrow 30 million francs from French banks to make the first two payments, it was hardly a surprise to anyone when Haiti defaulted soon thereafter. Still, a subsequent French king sent another expedition in 1838 with 12 warships to force the Haitian president’s hand. The 1838 revision, inaccurately labeled “Traité d’Amitié” – or “Treaty of Friendship” – reduced the outstanding amount owed to 60 million francs, but the Haitian government was once again ordered to take out crushing loans to pay the balance. It was the Haitian people who suffered the brunt of the consequences of France’s theft. Boyer levied draconian taxes in order to pay back the loans. And while Christophe had been busy developing a national school system during his reign, under Boyer, and all subsequent presidents, such projects had to be put on hold. Moreover, researchers have found that the independence debt and the resulting drain on the Haitian treasury were directly responsible not only for the underfunding of education in 20th-century Haiti, but also for the lack of health care and the country’s inability to develop public infrastructure. A 2022 analysis by The New York Times, furthermore, revealed that Haitians ended up paying more than 112 million francs over seven decades, or $560 million – estimated between $22 billion and $44 billion in today’s dollars. Recognizing the gravity of this scandal, French economist Thomas Piketty has argued that France should repay at least $28 billion to Haiti in restitution.
A debt that’s both moral and material
Former French presidents, from Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy to François Hollande, have a history of punishing, skirting or downplaying Haitian demands for recompense. In May 2015, when Hollande became only France’s second head of state to visit Haiti, he admitted that his country needed to “settle the debt.” Later, realizing he had unwittingly provided fuel for the legal claims already prepared by attorney Ira Kurzban on behalf of the Haitian people, Hollande clarified that he meant France’s debt was merely “moral.” To deny that the consequences of slavery were also material is to deny French history itself. France belatedly abolished slavery in 1848 in its remaining colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion and French Guyana, which are still territories of France today. Afterward, the French government demonstrated once again its understanding of slavery’s relationship to economics when it financially compensated the former “owners” of enslaved people. The resulting racial wealth gap is no metaphor. In metropolitan France, 14.1% of the population lives below the poverty line. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, in contrast, where more than 80% of the population is of African descent, the poverty rates are 38% and 46%, respectively. The poverty rate in Haiti is even more dire at 59%. And whereas the gross domestic product per capita – the best measure of a country’s standard of living – is $44,690 in France, it’s a mere $1,693 in Haiti. These discrepancies can be viewed as the concrete consequences of stolen labor from generations of Africans and their descendants. In recent years, French academics have begun to increasingly contribute to the conversation about the longitudinal harms the indemnity brought to Haiti. Yet what effectively amounts to a statement of “no comment” has historically been the only response from France’s current government under President Emmanuel Macron. On April 17, 2025, the bicentennial of the indemnity ordinance, Macron finally broke his silence. In an official communiqué, Macron acknowledged the “heavy financial indemnity” his country imposed upon Haiti and announced “a joint Franco-Haitian commission responsible for examining our common past and shedding light on all its dimensions.” But he did not address the question of reparations. Many Haitians were rightfully not satisfied: the only initiative from France that would really matter, they said, would be one detailing how it plans to provide economic recompense to the Haitian people. This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 30, 2020.Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This question fascinates me because I am a business professor who studies why society abandons and then sometimes returns to certain technologies, such as vinyl records, landline phones and metal coins. The demise of electric streetcars in Los Angeles and attempts to bring them back today vividly demonstrate the costs and challenges of such revivals. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9X78ZqGyc5o?wmode=transparent&start=0 The 2028 Olympic Games will be held in existing sports venues around Los Angeles and are expected to host 15,000 athletes and over 1 million spectators.
Riding the Red and Yellow Cars
Transportation is a critical priority in any city, but especially so in Los Angeles, which has been a sprawling metropolis from the start.
In the early 1900s, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, who owned vast tracts of land around LA, started subdividing his holdings into small plots and building homes. In order to attract buyers, he also built a trolley system that whisked residents from outlying areas to jobs and shopping downtown.
By the 1930s, Los Angeles had a vibrant public transportation network, with over 1,000 miles of electric streetcar routes, operated by two companies: Pacific Electric Railway, with its “Red Cars,” and Los Angeles Railway, with its “Yellow Cars.”
The system wasn’t perfect by any means. Many people felt that streetcars were inconvenient and also unhealthy when they were jammed with riders. Moreover, streetcars were slow because they had to share the road with automobiles. As auto usage climbed and roads became congested, travel times increased.
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Nonetheless, many Angelenos rode the streetcars – especially during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and automobile plants shifted to producing military vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwKv3_WwD4o?wmode=transparent&start=0 In 1910, Los Angeles had a widely used local rail network, with over 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) of track. What happened?
Demise of public transit
The end of the war marked the end of the line for streetcars. The war effort had transformed oil, tire and car companies into behemoths, and these industries needed new buyers for goods from the massive factories they had built for military production. Civilians and returning soldiers were tired of rationing and war privations, and they wanted to spend money on goods such as cars.
After years of heavy usage during the war, Los Angeles’ streetcar system needed an expensive capital upgrade. But in the mid-1940s, most of the system was sold to a company called National City Lines, which was partly owned by the carmaker General Motors, the oil companies Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, and the Firestone tire company.
These powerful forces had no incentive to maintain or improve the old electric streetcar system. National City ripped up tracks and replaced the streetcars with buses that were built by General Motors, used Firestone tires and ran on gasoline.
What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city.
Three key improvements are planned for the Olympics. First, LA’s airport terminals will be connected to the rail system. Second, the Los Angeles organizing committee is planning heavily on using buses to move people. It will do this by reassigning some lanes away from cars and making them available for 3,000 more buses, which will be borrowed from other locales.
Finally, there are plans to permanently increase bicycle lanes around the city. However, one major initiative, a bike path along the Los Angeles River, is still under an environmental review that may not be completed by 2028.
Car-free for 17 days
I expect that organizers will pull off a car-free Olympics, simply by making driving and parking conditions so awful during the Games that people are forced to take public transportation to sports venues around the city. After the Games end, however, most of LA is likely to quickly revert to its car-centric ways.
As Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA 2028 organizing committee, recently put it: “The unique thing about Olympic Games is for 17 days you can fix a lot of problems when you can set the rules – for traffic, for fans, for commerce – than you do on a normal day in Los Angeles.”
This article has been updated to indicate that Los Angeles has four light-rail lines.
Dive into “The Knowledge,” where curiosity meets clarity. This playlist, in collaboration with STMDailyNews.com, is designed for viewers who value historical accuracy and insightful learning. Our short videos, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute and a half, make complex subjects easy to grasp in no time. Covering everything from historical events to contemporary processes and entertainment, “The Knowledge” bridges the past with the present. In a world where information is abundant yet often misused, our series aims to guide you through the noise, preserving vital knowledge and truths that shape our lives today. Perfect for curious minds eager to discover the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of everything around us. Subscribe and join in as we explore the facts that matter. https://stmdailynews.com/the-knowledge/
International Women’s Day is celebrated globally on March 8th to honor women’s achievements and promote gender equality, originating from a 1908 march in New York for better rights.
International Women’s Day is a global celebration that honors the achievements of women and highlights the progress still to be made in the fight for gender equality. On this day, people around the world come together to recognize the amazing contributions of women everywhere and to rally for greater gender equity in all areas of life.
The origins of International Women’s Day can be traced back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York City to demand better working conditions and the right to vote. Since then, the celebration has grown to be an international event, with more than 100 countries recognizing the day. The United Nations even declared March 8th as International Women’s Day in 1975, to honor the struggles of women around the world.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #ChooseToChallenge, meaning that everyone is encouraged to call out gender bias and inequality when they see it. We’re also encouraged to celebrate women’s achievements, support each other, and take action for equality.
It’s important to recognize the progress we’ve made in terms of gender equality, but we still have a long way to go. International Women’s Day serves as a reminder that we must continue to fight for gender equality in all areas of life. Let’s use this day to honor the contributions of women around the world, and to continue the fight for a more equitable world.
Rebecca Jo is a mother of four and is a creative soul from Phoenix, Arizona, who also enjoys new adventures. Rebecca Jo has a passion for the outdoors and indulges in activities like camping, fishing, hunting and riding roller coasters. She is married to Rod Washington
Arizona scholarships 2026: Arizona scholarships are open through ACF: one application for 160+ awards, plus ARAC’s $1,500 Ashby-Herring scholarships due April 6, 2026.
Scholarship season moves fast, and for a lot of Arizona families, the hardest part isn’t writing the essay or gathering transcripts—it’s simply finding the right opportunities in time.
The Archer Ragsdale Arizona Chapter (ARAC), Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. is encouraging students and the community to take advantage of scholarship resources through the Arizona Community Foundation (ACF), including an easy online application that can match applicants with 160+ scholarships—plus virtual workshops where students can get help directly from ACF’s scholarship team.
Whether you’re a high school senior, a current college student, or an adult re-entry student, ACF’s scholarship portal is designed to meet people where they are.
The Big Picture: One Application, 160+ Scholarships
According to the flyer, ACF awarded $6.3 million in scholarships last year, with over 160 scholarships available through a single, easy application.
What to watch for: Even if a student is only targeting one scholarship, completing the ACF application can surface additional matches they didn’t know existed.
ARAC (Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.) awards two or more scholarships to deserving Arizona students who are college-bound. The flyer highlights the Ashby-Herring scholarships, named in honor of late founding ARAC members who were original Tuskegee Airmen.
Free Virtual Workshops (Zoom): Get Help With Your Application
If you’ve ever watched a student stall out halfway through an application, these workshops are a smart fix: they’re designed so applicants can work on their scholarship application with support from ACF’s scholarship team.
Workshop dates (Zoom):
February 12, 2026 — 4:00 to 5:00 p.m.
March 5, 2026 — 4:00 to 5:00 p.m.
March 26 — 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. (date listed on flyer; confirm year when registering)
What to watch for: Register for the dates you can attend and come prepared with what you already have (basic info, activities list, questions). One hour of guided progress can save days of procrastination.
Why This Matters (and Why Sharing Helps)
The Tuskegee Airmen legacy is rooted in excellence, discipline, and breaking barriers—and scholarships tied to that legacy are meant to elevate futures for the next generation.
If you’re a parent, teacher, coach, mentor, or neighbor, consider this your nudge: forward the link, post it in a group chat, or share it with a student who might qualify. Deadlines hit quickly, and the easiest scholarship to win is often the one you actually apply for.
College isn’t just classes and credits — it’s learning how to manage your time, money, health, and relationships while you build a future that actually fits. In our College Life coverage, STM Daily News shares practical, real-world guides for students and families: campus living tips, study and productivity habits, career prep, budgeting basics, mental wellness check-ins, and smart ways to make the most of college in Arizona and beyond.
Expect quick reads, useful takeaways, and “what to do next” advice — whether you’re a first-year student, a transfer, or heading back to school.
Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
