1889-01-00: (Frederick Douglass Sent to Haiti as U.S.

1889-01-00: (Frederick Douglass Sent to Haiti as U.S. Ambassador, the Most Famous African American of the Nineteenth Century Dispatched to the First Black Republic, Where He Would Defend Haitian Sovereignty Against His Own Government’s Demands): In January 1889, President Benjamin Harrison sent Frederick Douglass, the most famous African American of the nineteenth century, to represent the United States in Haiti. Douglass was an abolitionist, orator, author, and former enslaved man whose career embodied the struggle for Black freedom in America. His appointment to Haiti was both an honor and a relegation: the most accomplished Black diplomat in the country sent to the one posting where his race was considered an advantage. Douglass served with integrity, but he was placed in an impossible position. The U.S. government expected Hyppolite to reward American support with a lease on a coaling station and naval base at Môle Saint-Nicolas, a strategic peninsula at the northern entrance of the Windward Passage. Hyppolite, arguing that the constitution forbade the alienation of Haitian territory, refused. American newspapers unfairly blamed Douglass for the failure, holding a Black man responsible for a Black nation’s refusal to surrender its sovereignty. Douglass resigned in 1891 but returned to champion Haitian interests at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, delivering the dedication speech at the Haitian pavilion.