Liliane Pierre-Paul, voice of Jounal 4e on Radio Kiskeya, dies
Liliane Pierre-Paul died on 31 July 2023 of a sudden heart attack, at home, getting ready to leave and present the four o’clock news. She was born in Jeremie on…
Yvonne Sylvain, the first Haitian woman doctor, is born in Port-au-Prince
Yvonne Sylvain was born in Port-au-Prince on 28 June 1907, a daughter of the writer Georges Sylvain. She trained first as a teacher at the Ecole Normale. At twenty-eight she…
Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel, silenced by Duvalier’s men, dies at eighty
Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel died of a heart attack on 28 June 1986, five months after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country. She was born in Port-au-Prince in 1906. In 1934 she helped…
Victoria Montou, Grann Toya, dies and is buried with imperial honours
Victoria Montou died on 12 June 1805. She was called Toya, or Grann Toya, and she came out of Dahomey into bondage in the north of Saint-Domingue. She was enslaved…
Stella Jean, the first Black Italian designer in the fashion chamber, is born in Rome
Stella Jean was born in Rome on 17 June 1979 to a Haitian mother, Violette Jean, and an Italian father. She built a label that puts Italian tailoring on top…
Marie Vieux-Chauvet dies in exile in New York
Marie Vieux-Chauvet died of a brain tumour in New York on 19 June 1973. She was born in Port-au-Prince on 16 September 1916 and started writing at ten. In 1968…
Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall, novelist of Haiti’s poor, is born in Port-au-Prince
She was born Marie-Thérèse Colimon in Port-au-Prince on 11 April 1918. She began in the theatre and published five plays between 1949 and 1960. In 1974 came the novel that…
Mimi Barthélémy, who carried the Haitian kont to the world’s stages, dies in Paris
She was born Michèle Armand in Port-au-Prince on 3 May 1939 and died in Paris on 27 April 2013, aged seventy-three. Storyteller, actress, director and writer, she made her life’s…
Leonie Coicou Madiou, first woman elected mayor of Port-au-Prince, is born
Leonie Coicou was born at Petion-Ville on 10 April 1891, daughter of Lisebonne Joseph and the poet Massillon Coicou. Her father was arrested in the night and shot within hours…
Bayyinah Bello, historian of the revolution’s women, is born
Bayyinah Bello was born on 25 March 1948. She studied in France and the United States, then went to the African continent and stayed fifteen years, four of them in…