Slave revolt threats forced whites to accept racial equality and integrated assemblies

Evidence

Since they had been illegally excluded from voting, furthermore, they declared that all the assemblies then in existence were illegitimate and must be replaced through new, racially integrated elections. Whites in the region had been furiously resisting any grant of political rights to free-coloreds for years, but with slave revolt looming to the north, times had changed. The Port-au-Prince delegates accepted all the free-coloreds’ demands. Another “Concordat” signed in October 1791 added more provisions, ordering the integration of local militia units and abolishing the use of racial distinctions in public discourse. All free men would simply be “citizens.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 408

Categorization

• XREF: A striking early success for a color-blind republicanism in the colony — sets up a contrast with both Ogé’s earlier failed revolt and the later hardening of racial lines. — connects to: Racial order responded to each mobilizing threat with formal legal equality — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 128