1920-11: (Two Hundred Women Take the Streets — On the Inaugural Day of Fundraising in November 1920 a Reported Two Hundred Haitian Women Taking to the Street…

1920-11: (Two Hundred Women Take the Streets — On the Inaugural Day of Fundraising in November 1920 a Reported Two Hundred Haitian Women Taking to the Streets of Port-au-Prince, the Names of the Hundreds of Women Unknown, Malbranche-Sylvain’s Companions Likely Including Régina Carrié Thoby and Her Teenage Daughters Madeleine and Jeanne — the Same Madeleine Who Would Later Found the LFAS and Write Haiti et Ses Femmes, the Teenage Girls Walking the Streets of Port-au-Prince Fundraising for National Liberation Receiving an Education in Political Organizing That No Classroom Could Provide): On the inaugural day of fundraising in November 1920, a reported two hundred Haitian women took to the streets of Port-au-Prince. The names of the hundreds of women who traversed the urban center that day are unknown — the archive preserves the number but not the individuals, a recurring calculus of erasure. It is likely that Malbranche-Sylvain’s fundraising compatriots included other vocal antioccupation women activists such as Régina Carrié Thoby. Among Malbranche-Sylvain’s companions, her teenage daughters Madeleine and Jeanne were present — the same Madeleine who would grow to found the LFAS and write Haiti et ses femmes, the same Jeanne who would become coeditor of La Voix des Femmes. These teenage girls, walking the streets of Port-au-Prince soliciting donations for national liberation, were receiving an education in political organizing that no classroom could provide. The street that had claimed Eleanor Charles’s body, that had broken Adirenng Senatus’s bones, that the four market women of Petit Goâve refused to abandon — this same street was now the site of organized women’s resistance. The passage from victim to agent was not sequential but simultaneous: the street was always both.