Roumain and Beaulieu go to New York for party funds

Roumain had detached himself from the nationalist movement by 1931 and had been arguing in print, under a pseudonym, that colour was not the central problem of Haitian politics. The central problem, he argued, was class. He wrote to Tristan Remy that he had completely revised his political conceptions, called himself a communist, said he was not militant because the cadres for a political struggle did not yet exist in Haiti, and renounced his origins as the son of large landowners. He and Christian Beaulieu, both in their twenties, travelled to New York seeking financial help from the Communist Party of the United States. Support was promised on condition that an underground party be formed. They returned and began meeting students and organising clandestinely in La Saline and Bel-Air, with a following that the surviving evidence suggests was small and drawn mainly from privileged students.