1930-03-01: (Ten Thousand Women March — Following Prayer and Mass at l’Eglise du Sacré-Coeur Some 10,000 Women Marching in the Streets with Banners Raised in…

1930-03-01: (Ten Thousand Women March — Following Prayer and Mass at l’Eglise du Sacré-Coeur Some 10,000 Women Marching in the Streets with Banners Raised in Protest of the Occupation, Men Not Attending as Agreed and Mme. Thoby Warning the Crowd It Was Exclusively a Women’s Manifestation, the Somber Crowd of Women and Girls Circling the Statue of Emperor Henry Christophe on the Champ-de-Mars and on Their Knees Two Children Placing a Wreath of Flowers at the Foot of the Liberator Dessalines — La Dessalines Disappearing Under the Shadows of the Crowd as His Daughters Surrounded Him and Their Sweet Voices Sang the National Anthem): On March 1, following a prayer and mass at the l’Eglise du Sacré-Coeur, some ten thousand women marched in the streets with banners raised in protest of the occupation. As agreed upon based on the permit, men did not attend the protest, and according to international newspaper coverage Mme. Thoby came out on the steps and warned the crowd that it was exclusively a women’s manifestation. Walking down Champ-de-Mars, the somber crowd of women and girls circled the statue of Emperor Henry Christophe. On their knees, two children placed a wreath of flowers at the foot of the Liberator Jean-Jacques Dessalines. For those men observing from afar, La Dessalines disappeared under the shadows of the crowd — his daughters surrounded him and their sweet voices sang the national anthem. The image was incandescent: the founding fathers of the republic, cast in bronze, engulfed by the living tide of women and girls who claimed them not as monuments to a masculine past but as ancestors of a feminine future. The crowd had been orchestrated for days by Mme. Thoby while she simultaneously negotiated government permission — what may have appeared serendipitous was in fact the culmination of a decade’s political education in the streets of Port-au-Prince.