1920–1921: (Women as Fundraisers Archivists and Storytellers — Women Knocking on Doors and Walking Streets Collecting $100 US on the First Day, Over Five Mon…

1920–1921: (Women as Fundraisers Archivists and Storytellers — Women Knocking on Doors and Walking Streets Collecting $100 US on the First Day, Over Five Months Between October 1920 and February 1921 Haitian Women Leading the Fundraising Initiative to Subsidize the UP Delegation to Washington, the Campaign Spreading to All Sixty-One UP Committees with Women as Predominant Fundraisers and Administrative Managers, Women Instructed to Spend Two to Three Days a Week Soliciting Funds — In These Intimate Encounters to Fund the Desoccupation Movement Women Shared and Collected the Stories of Atrocities, Documenting Women’s Experiences and Later Transmitting the Narratives to the UP Membership and to Unaffiliated Women and Men Throughout the Country and the Region): The women knocked on doors and walked the streets, collecting funds from passersby. At the end of the first day, the women collected one hundred US dollars. In the five months between October 1920 and February 1921, Haitian women led the fundraising initiative to subsidize the Union Patriotique’s delegation to the United States. The campaign spread throughout the country to all sixty-one committees of the UP. Women were the predominant fundraisers and administrative managers in these various chapters. As financial keepers of the 1921 trip to the United States, women were instructed to spend two to three days a week soliciting funds from families in their respective neighborhoods. The UP women spent weeks in the homes of families across the country. It was in these intimate encounters to fund the desoccupation movement that women shared and collected the stories of the atrocities of the occupation. During these visits women of the UP heard how women had been changed by the occupation, documented women’s experiences, and later transmitted these narratives to the organization’s membership and to unaffiliated women and men throughout the country and the region. From this reservoir of knowledge, the women synthesized the narratives and situated them at the center of the 1921 UP delegation report. The stories were also reported in US newspapers, and several years later they were printed in the book Occupied Haiti after Haitian women requested a woman-led investigative commission. The fundraising was never merely financial — it was an archival practice, a gathering of testimony that transformed the private suffering of individual women into a collective indictment of empire.