Jacques Roumain founds the Bureau d’Ethnologie

On 31 October 1941 Jacques Roumain (novelist, ethnologist, founder of the Communist Party, author of Gouverneurs de la rosée) founded Haiti’s Bureau d’Ethnologie by decree-law, having just returned from exile under Élie Lescot. It was to inventory, classify and conserve ethnographic and archaeological material, protect sites and create a museum. That museum was the first of its kind in the country. It was renamed the Bureau National d’Ethnologie by decree in 1984.