1915–1929: (Quite Unqualified to Colonize: The Turgeau Club, Edwards’s Verdict, and the Southerners-to-Handle-Haitians Myth): In social relations with Haiti,…

1915–1929: (Quite Unqualified to Colonize: The Turgeau Club, Edwards’s Verdict, and the Southerners-to-Handle-Haitians Myth): In social relations with Haiti, the occupation mirrored colonial attitudes of the day — paternal toward the masses, aloof and condescending toward the elite, who cordially reciprocated. As if Haiti were West Africa or British India, the Americans had their club in Turgeau, which no Haitian ever entered except as a servant, and from 1918 on no U.S. officer was admitted to the Cercle Bellevue. Some of this distance was blamed on American racial attitudes and particularly those of the wives of lower-ranking treaty civilians and the noncommissioned officers who served as junior officers in the Garde. Edwards, never at a loss where American failings were concerned, donned the mantle of Kipling in 1929: he hated to see his own colour and race behaving in a way that brought discredit to the whole white race — what respect could an educated Haitian have for a race that allowed its women to get so drunk they had to be taken home in the bottom of the car, and all that before native servants. Six months later, unable to contain himself further, Edwards rendered a final verdict: the American in Haiti had shown himself quite unqualified to colonize at all. A recurring theme in Edwards’s dispatches was the charge that the U.S. government had sent about seventy-five percent Southerners to Haiti as they were supposed to know how to handle coloured people — the claim first appeared in a 1920 New York Times interview with Harry Franck, was echoed by Emily Balch and Paul Douglas in 1927, given considerable weight by sociologist Leyburn in 1941 who admitted subsequently he could not substantiate it, and by the 1950s had become a commonplace of histoire reçue. Analyzing by name against U.S. Census data the record of every Marine officer on duty in Haiti from 1916 to 1932, Wellesley College researcher Ann Hurst found that the proportion of Southern-born officers in the Corps was lower than the percentage of Southerners in the national population, and that in thirteen of the nineteen years of occupation the percentage of Southern Marine officers in Haiti was below the percentage of Southern officers in the Corps. In 1930, only 24 of 116 Garde officers including ex-NCOs — 20.6 percent — were Southern, at a time when 23.4 percent of all Americans were Southern-born. Yet there remained the question of atmospherics: Colonel Waller of Virginia, though he served in Haiti less than two years and departed in 1917, was a conspicuous and very Southern figure who set the tone wherever he served, writing to Lejeune in June 1916 that he knew the nigger and how to handle him, and in another letter that they were real niggers and no mistake — there were some very fine looking, well educated polished men but they were real nigs beneath the surface. General Russell was a Georgian, yet no critic ever caught him in act or attitude suggesting racism — he and his wife, who spoke polished French, mixed unselfconsciously with and entertained Haitians throughout their tour, and Mrs. Russell conquered even Danache, who described her as a great lady of tact and high courtesy. As Paul Farmer pointed out, a few Wallers, especially in top positions, can go a long way.