1954, January 1–4: (Le Tricinquantenaire: The Te Deum at Gonaïves, Levelt’s Boisrond-Tonnerre, the Re-Enactment of Vertières Where Peasants Surged into the H…

1954, January 1–4: (Le Tricinquantenaire: The Te Deum at Gonaïves, Levelt’s Boisrond-Tonnerre, the Re-Enactment of Vertières Where Peasants Surged into the Haitian Ranks, and Marian Anderson at Sans Souci): The Tricinquantenaire — the sesquicentennial of independence — was splendiferous. At dawn on January 1, saluting guns opened the celebration at Gonaïves, where in the new cathedral on the Place de la Patrie echoed the grandest Te Deum since 1934. The president unveiled a memorial obelisk with bronze bas-reliefs while General Levelt, a debonair Boisrond-Tonnerre, intoned the original Declaration of Independence complete with the blan’s skin for parchment, his blood for ink, and skull for inkwell. After lunch, Mme Magloire led a pilgrimage of ladies to the tomb of the gentle Empress Marie-Claire Heureuse, and that night amid brilliant illuminations Jean Brierre and Jacques Alexis declaimed original works. Next day, via Bréda for homage to Toussaint, the presidential progress moved to the Cap, and on the morrow came the long-awaited re-enactment of Vertières on the very battleground. As thousands of peasants watched breathless, cadets of the Académie Militaire and soldiers of the army, costumed for their roles, fought the famous assault to the last blank cartridge — at one point, when the Haitians were momentarily thrown back by the French defenders, the peasant spectators rose with a fierce outcry and surged into the Haitian ranks to make sure Dessalines would win. That night the president and Mme Magloire held a state dinner for 700 guests on the floodlit esplanade of Sans Souci Palace, where, backed by a superb Haitian choir, Marian Anderson brushed the stars with her incomparable voice. The grand finale, a ball on January 4 attended by 3,000 guests at the Palais National, preceded that day by the unveiling of statues of the Fondateurs on the Champ de Mars, rang down the curtain on a glorious celebration. The moment at Vertières when the peasant spectators broke through the line between audience and performance, surging into the ranks of the costumed Haitian soldiers to ensure Dessalines’s victory over the costumed French, collapsed the distance between 1803 and 1954 — for those peasants, the battle was not a re-enactment but a continuation, the revolution not a historical event but a living obligation, and the possibility that the French might win, even in pantomime, was intolerable to a people for whom 1804 was not the past but the permanent condition of their freedom.