1889-10-17: (Florvil Hyppolite Elected President, Initiating Perhaps the Most Democratic Administration of Nineteenth-Century Haiti, With Press Freedom, Publ…

1889-10-17: (Florvil Hyppolite Elected President, Initiating Perhaps the Most Democratic Administration of Nineteenth-Century Haiti, With Press Freedom, Public Works, and a Refusal to Surrender Haitian Territory to the United States): On October 17, 1889, Florvil Hyppolite was elected president of Haiti. Born on May 26, 1828, into a wealthy mulatto family in Cap-Haïtien, Hyppolite had ridden American naval support to power, but once in office he demonstrated an independence that surprised both his domestic opponents and his foreign backers. His administration was arguably the most democratic Haiti had experienced in its eighty-five-year history. There was no press censorship. Public works programs modernized Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien, including the construction of the Iron Market, a massive iron structure that looked like a mosque with four minarets, built by a French company that had originally manufactured it as a train station for Cairo, Egypt, where the sale failed to materialize. Telegraph lines connected the major towns. The telephone was introduced. Agricultural production and exports increased. And when the United States demanded a naval base at Môle Saint-Nicolas, Hyppolite said no. He died suddenly on March 24, 1896, and was succeeded by Tirésias Simon Sam.