1791-Feb.: Following a two-month trial in Cap Français, Vincent Ogé and more than twenty others were brutally executed by being broken upon the wheel and dec…

1791-Feb.: Following a two-month trial in Cap Français, Vincent Ogé and more than twenty others were brutally executed by being broken upon the wheel and decapitated. This state-sanctioned violence was intended to intimidate the free nonwhite population and reassert the “absolute” power of the planter class. Ironically, the grisly public ritual galvanized public opinion in France and radicalized future revolutionaries in Saint-Domingue. The execution triggered a wave of repression against free blacks that only deepened the resolve of those seeking to overthrow the colonial regime. Ogé’s death became a foundational moment in the struggle against the racialized caste system of the Americas.