Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, the first Haitian woman anthropologist, is born

Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain was born in Port-au-Prince on 6 November 1898, daughter of Georges Sylvain, a leader of the resistance to the American occupation. Her doctoral work argued for the African roots of Haitian Kreyòl, at a time when the language was dismissed as a worthless patois. Malinowski brought her to London as his research assistant. She did fieldwork at Kenscoff and Marbial, and later in Kinshasa, Lomé and Nsukka, publishing over two hundred articles. She died in a car accident in Nigeria in 1975.