1957-10-22: (François Duvalier Inaugurated as President, the Vodou-Practicing, American-Trained Doctor Who Would Transform Noirisme From a Philosophy of Cult…

1957-10-22: (François Duvalier Inaugurated as President, the Vodou-Practicing, American-Trained Doctor Who Would Transform Noirisme From a Philosophy of Cultural Pride Into a Justification for One of the Most Brutal Dictatorships in the Western Hemisphere): On October 22, 1957, François Duvalier was inaugurated as president of Haiti. Born on April 14, 1907, in Port-au-Prince, the son of a Black justice of the peace, Duvalier had grown up during the American occupation and been radicalized by the overt racism of the Marines. He earned a medical degree in 1934, worked for a decade as a hospital physician, studied tropical disease control at the University of Michigan, and achieved fame in Haiti for eradicating yaws. He was also a Vodou houngan who deliberately modeled his public image on Baron Samedi, the powerful loa of death. A new constitution was promulgated in December 1957 that granted universal suffrage. Within a year, Duvalier had survived a military coup attempt and created the Tonton Macoutes. The Noirisme movement that Price-Mars had founded as a philosophy of cultural liberation was now the ideological foundation of a police state.