♪ ♪ ♪ >> Just ahead, one of the leading authorities on the nation of Haiti with us today, historian Roger Persaud.

That's next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by... Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Over the next 10 years, Comcast is committing $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with the tools and resources they need to be ready for anything.

Additional funding provided by Pfizer.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> Roger Persaud, welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, sir.

It is a privilege and an honor to be here.

>> You know, I'm gonna start in the beginning.

You were actually born in Guyana.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Tell us about the place of your birth and how it is you evolved to come to the United States and work in your field of history-making and history-documenting.

>> Well, growing up in Guyana, we didn't have much.

So, we had to want everything.

And one of the things I really was fascinated about was airplanes.

I didn't only want to fly them, I wanted to find out how they worked.

So, I studied.

I studied engineering in Guyana.

Migrated here as a 19-year-old, went to the Academy of Aeronautics, finished my studies there, went straight into the Air Force, and, from the Air Force, went into the airline business.

>> The United States Air Force.

>> United States Air Force.

Yes, sir.

>> How long were you there?

>> Seven and a half years.

A lot of experience traveling through the South, learning where places where people of color could hang out without being -- having problems.

And that led me to some fascinating experiences in places like Oklahoma.

Then, when I got to Oklahoma, especially Tulsa, Oklahoma, I realized that something different had happened there.

>> Absolutely.

Being in the airline -- and particularly from the engineering perspective -- industry, you've had a lot of mobility.

You know, you've seen a lot of the world.

>> Yes, sir.

I've been able to tour Europe and happily tour Africa and see most of the Caribbean.

I've been to West Africa, South Africa, and not much of East Africa.

I still have a lot to do.

>> You have a new book.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Tell us about this book.

It's about Haiti.

>> It's about Haiti and more.

>> What's the name of the book?

>> The book is called "America Should be Grateful to Haiti."

And I'm serious about that.

It has a subtitle -- "Don't Believe the Lie...

When You See People of Color, See Pride."

Haiti is very important to the growth and development of the United States.

Many people don't realize, it was the Haitian Revolution that caused Napoléon to sell the land that he owned in the United States that divided the East Coast from the West Coast.

>> Napoléon represented the French.

>> Yes, sir.

Napoléon had attained the leadership of France after the French Revolution.

And earlier in France, they -- after their revolution, they were no longer in favor of slavery.

And in 1794, they abolished slavery.

Napoléon came -- >> So, the French abolished slavery before -- obviously, before the United States and before the British.

>> Yes.

But it was overturned.

Napoléon decided to overturn it.

The maritime bourgeois were -- they wanted the money that they got in the old days.

You got to realize, between 1750 and 1800, Haiti was the pearl of the Antilles, producing 40% of the coffee consumed in Europe, 60% of the sugar consumed in Europe.

It was a gold mine.

It was France's wealthiest colony outside of France.

>> So, how can, at one time, one of the most wealthiest colonies or nations in the world, Haiti, now become one of the more poorest countries?

What happened?

Talk to us about this.

>> Toussaint Louverture led the revolt.

The revolt is a -- it's a long period.

It's 12 years.

Started in 1791.

They finally got independence in 1804.

Everybody loved Haiti before that.

Thomas Jefferson, in 1793, wrote a wonderful letter to his daughter about the great revolution in Haiti and how this level of freedom is gonna spread through the entire Caribbean.

But by 1804, things had changed.

You see, Haiti was the first successful slave revolt.

This was the first successful revolt of people of color.

Now, it was great for African-Americans.

It was great for slaves in the Caribbean and Latin America.

But for European slaveholders, it was in trepidation.

This was an era -- the 1800s were an era of European eminence, and this was a serious challenge to European eminence.

>> So, the Haitians defeated Napoléon.

>> They not only defeated Napoléon, they defeated the local French, French troops that came in afterwards.

Then they defeated a large British force -- 55,000 British troops expending £10 million over a 5-year period, and they lost.

Then, to protect his flank, to control the rest of the island, he took over -- Toussaint took over Santo Domingo so that there would be no vulnerability around him, because he expected -- he had his people in Europe telling him what was going on and how the tide was changing.

>> So, the whole island, at one time, Hispaniola, wasn't divided between the French and the Spanish.

>> Right.

They took it over.

Twice, they took it over.

When -- he took it over because he knew Napoléon was coming.

Napoléon came in -- 80,000 troops, 408 ships in a period from December 1801 to December 1803.

This was 3 1/2 years, the last part of the war, and they were soundly defeated.

>> I can tell that you're an engineer, 'cause you got these details down.

>> When I look at history, I look at the root cause.

For example, why did Ferdinand and Isabella fund Columbus' expensive voyages?

It was because they were just able -- in 1492, they removed the last vestiges of Moorish occupation of Europe, when they took over Grenada, which lasted about 800 years in Europe, when they took over Grenada.

>> Moor occupation.

People don't understand, where were the Moors originally from?

>> The Moors are African.

>> So you mean that there was a period of 800 years that Africans actually gave Europe culture.

>> Yes, they did.

They brought a lot of things into Europe.

And they didn't come into Europe as invaders.

What had happened, the Visigoths had come down -- these are Germanic people.

They had come down into that region, and the Moors could see, across the Straits of Gibraltar, what was going on.

So, they decided to go on the offensive, and they went in.

When they went in, they really brought culture into Spain.

They brought the three-course meal, with desserts and salads and all that.

That comes from Spain.

They brought in toothpaste.

They brought in hygiene.

They brought in medicine.

They had paved, lit roads in Europe.

They brought in -- >> Africans brought hygiene to Europe.

>> Yes.

And also education.

While there were 2 universities in all of Europe, the Moors built 17 universities in Spain.

These are facts that need to get out.

Once Ferdinand and Isabella got out the last vestiges -- once they took over Grenada, they decided to fund Columbus.

Now, Columbus was looking for a sea route to India for the spices and all the stuff they were getting from India.

He had cut his teeth in Portugal, with the Portuguese sailors.

And when he sailed towards the Bahamas -- he landed first in the Bahamas -- he thought he was in China.

He thought -- when he went to Haiti, he thought it was Zipangu -- Japan.

So, he was 8,000 miles off course.

Then, later on, Vespucci would call it "the New World" -- Amerigo Vespucci, who America is actually named after.

>> So, you know, in our neighborhood -- I started to say in "the 'hood" -- we laugh when we say that Columbus was a great discoverer.

He basically discovered that he was lost.

>> He never discovered he was lost.

He still thought he knew where he was.

>> Well, obviously, he did not -- >> He had no clue.

>> It was not India.

>> It was not India.

It was not India, but he thought it was.

And what really took place, he was looking to bring riches.

He wanted to reward.

He wanted to give them an ROI because they invested so much money with him.

And that's what he pushed for.

But the Spanish never really gained a strong foothold into Hispaniola.

He named it the Spanish Island -- Isla de España.

But it changed to Hispaniola.

>> Now, Hispaniola is the island now... >> The entire.

>> ...where Haiti and the Dominican Republic... >> Yes, sir.

>> ...are today.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Just so people understand the historical perspective.

>> Yes, sir.

Yes.

They tried -- in the 1500s, they brought in sugarcane from the Canary Islands, and they were trying to grow sugarcane.

They were trying to use the Indians, the indigenous people there, and they were just killing them.

It was just not working out.

That brought in the need for African labor.

>> The transatlantic slave trade.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Talk to us about how, because there's a lot of debate, even today in the United States, about critical race theory.

People do not want to hear about the transatlantic slave trade.

They don't want to hear about chattel slavery.

They don't want to hear about the oppression.

What was the distinctive characteristic of slavery, particularly by the British and others -- the French, all of them, the Spanish?

Can you just talk to us about the transatlantic slave trade and the role that this island, back then was known as Hispaniola?

>> The main factor in chattel slavery is people were classified as property.

Once you classify people as property, you can do whatever you want with them because technically -- not just technically -- you own them.

That is the difference.

But in Haiti, the brutality was unbelievable.

They were very brutal.

That's why Haiti became so successful.

They forced these Africans to work.

I mean, it was brutal.

People were being killed.

People were being slaughtered.

People were being tortured.

It was absolutely horrible.

I go into some of the gory details in the book.

And it is not pleasant.

But it is important that people understand what these people went through and why they fought for their freedom.

>> We believe people should learn from history, not repeat history, but learn from history.

And you're a historian.

And tell us why you wrote the book.

>> I wrote the book -- I knew there were mistakes.

I wrote the book because when my son Trevon came home one day from middle school, and we were discussing what he studied in school -- and this is 2016 -- he tells me they told him slaves come from Africa.

And we started to discuss some more, and I said, "This has got to change.

We've got to get involved in the narrative and tell the truth."

And, Dr. Chavis, my research educated me.

I thought I knew, but as I dug in, I was just discovering more and more amazing things about our history.

And everybody knows about slavery.

Everybody knows what went on, even though they don't want to hear it.

But what is more important, what is more significant is the dehumanization of both the indigenous and the African people.

That was necessary if slavery was gonna work, because even the slavers had to be convinced these people had no worth, no value.

So, they needed to be enslaved.

The dehumanization process was extremely effective.

>> The island still is experiencing the hardship, the lingering remnants of what happened in history.

>> Yes, and you can see the difference between what happens in Santo Domingo and what happens in Haiti.

And it's quite obvious that they're coming from two different levels.

Haiti, because the safety net was removed because of the impoverishment done by the payment of reparations and the isolation by the powers that be.

>> Right, so, Port-au-Prince is the capital of Haiti, and Santo Domingo is the capital of the Dominican Republic.

>> Yes.

But most of Dominican Republic is referred to as Santo Domingo back in the old days, because that's what the Spanish called it.

When it became independent, they changed it to Dominican Republic, and Santo Domingo became the capital.

>> From your perspective, all of what you've known, and you're a veteran of the United States Air Force -- thank you for your service -- what can you state on the record about today?

How can America solve its race problem?

>> First, it has to admit it's a problem.

It has to admit its failures in the past.

But, you see, there are some sins of omission and some sins of commission.

One of the processes of dehumanization was to eliminate the good parts of African history.

They don't tell you about Mansa Musa and the Mali Empire.

We learn in high school about Caesar Augustus, Augustus Caesar and the Roman Empire and how they controlled the Middle East.

But they didn't tell us that after he went into Egypt and tried to move into Kush, he ran up against the Kushite Empire and was defeated by an army led by a one-eyed black woman, Amanirenas.

She defeated the Roman Army.

They don't tell you about great things in African civilization because they want you to think that we have no history -- our history is dumb.

They did the same thing with the American Indians.

Then, when I went into Oklahoma, I learned of the Osage Indians.

And these were a magnificent people.

This was the most powerful Indian nation in the central United States.

These people went to France.

They went to France before 1776.

They traded with the French, and they got rich.

>> Native Americans.

>> Native Americans -- Osage Indians.

And they built up a tremendous -- matter of fact, when Lewis and Clark went in, in the expedition of discovery into the Louisiana Purchase region, they were so amazed with the Osage Indians, they told Thomas Jefferson to invite them to the White House.

They went to the White House not once, but twice.

Yet, within 25 years, they lost everything they had.

There's more to that story, if you want to know.

>> Well, you know, there's been an acknowledgement of the 100-year anniversary of Tulsa... >> Yes.

>> ...the destruction of Black Wall Street.

But one of the sidebar stories that people don't focus on was the -- not just consultative but affirmative relationship between people of African descent and Native Americans in Oklahoma.

>> Yes.

>> In fact, there were a lot of intermarriages between Native Americans and African-Americans in Oklahoma in particular... >> Yes.

>> ...that they'd rise to the entrepreneurship of Black Wall Street.

>> These people were living there because it was not the United States.

They could not be enslaved.

And they did this business with the Indians.

Like you said, they even intermarried with the Indians.

They did business with the outlaws, and they did business with the Underground Railroad.

So, these people prospered.

Now, I don't know if you know this, sir, but Oklahoma is called the Sooner State.

It's called the Sooner State because the white people that came in came in sooner than they should.

And that's a fact.

But when they came in, they had no choice but to do business with these people that were there.

And these people got rich.

They developed.

They got rich.

And then a couple of businessmen and a lawyer -- you always need a lawyer.

O.W.

Gurley and James Smitherman came together, and they helped businesses develop.

They created the Black Wall Street.

By the way, the phrase "Black Wall Street" was coined by Booker T. Washington.

He intended to use it as a model to develop black communities all over the United States.

Now, what happened around that time was the discovery of oil in Oklahoma.

So, here were these well-off black people.

Now, Black Wall Street was huge.

It was over 300 businesses.

They had lawyers' office, doctors' office.

They had two hotels.

They had a 55-room hotel.

It was booming.

And these guys are now gonna use their money and get in the oil business.

But the city fathers in Tulsa, they thought, "Unh-unh, we're not gonna let this happen."

And they invited the Ku Klux Klan to come into Oklahoma, and they started a series of lynchings.

Matter of fact, the event that precipitated the Tulsa Massacre was a young fellow who had a shoeshine stand, and he was going up to use a bathroom up in the Drexel Building.

This was prearranged.

And he stumbled over the elevator operator.

They were actually friends, and somebody saw it and claimed that he attacked her.

And they brought him down.

They were gonna arrest him.

A few nights ago, another fellow had a situation.

He was arrested, and when he was released, he was lynched.

So, these people came down, and they tried to protect Dick Rowland from being lynched, and that created the Tulsa Massacre.

>> I want to circle back to Haiti.

>> Yes.

>> Tragic earthquakes, devastation from hurricanes, political assassination of the leaders of Haiti -- tell us why you entitled the book about Haiti, that America should respect Haiti.

>> America should be grateful to Haiti because of the Louisiana Purchase but not only that.

Haiti is an example of how people can rise.

Haiti is the best example of a black nation rising on its own.

Toussaint Louverture, when they abolished slavery, he turned it into a profitable operation, even paying the laborers.

And it was profitable.

It could work.

He showed them how it could work.

But the greed and avarice, it just came back.

And the maritime bourgeois in France, the people who were making money from the slave trade, making money from operations in Haiti, they pushed Napoléon to reinstate slavery.

Now -- >> You used that term a couple times -- the bourgeois.

Explain the bourgeoisie.

Who are the bourgeois?

>> These are rich people who staying in Europe and making money by investing in ships in the slave trade.

They are also investing in ships that are moving the sugarcane and the coffee.

These people were making money like they had never seen.

It was a tremendous enterprise for them, and all the sudden it was cut off.

It still was profitable.

You know, the interesting thing about Toussaint -- he never wanted independence.

He liked being French.

He enjoyed being French.

And he liked being French because France was the first country to abolish slavery, in 1794.

And the others had not done that.

So, he was not pro-independence.

He wanted to be French.

But the French wanted to enslave his people again.

And, you know, the United States can learn from that.

The British learned from it.

Matter of fact, the British tried to take credit for the Haitian revolution.

General Maitland published a letter claiming that they were the ones responsible for Haiti being free.

[ Laughs ] It's amazing.

You know, failure is an orphan, but success has a thousand fathers.

>> Why is the United States, the most powerful country in the world today, reluctant to help an independent, democratic Haiti really rise to progress again, given its glorious history?

>> When Haiti was impoverished, there was no money to invest.

So, some of the people that came and invested in Haiti were Germans.

And during World War I, America used that to come in and take over Haiti.

But one of the things they did -- Haiti was growing with powerful black groups in rural areas, because these blacks were spread out all over the country.

"Haiti" means "land of mountains," and these people were all over the country.

The U.S. came in and changed that, centralized everything, moved everything to Port-au-Prince and caused these black people to move to town from their rural environment.

And that changed everything in Haiti.

>> But how did the United States exercise that kind of power over Haiti?

>> When you go in with troops, you can do anything you want.

And the United States was actually looking to prop up its operation in Dominican Republic.

By 1920, there was about 50,000 -- now, they call them braceros -- but they were cane cutters.

These were black people from Haiti going to Dominican Republic to cut cane.

By 1930, when there was the depression, and the sugar prices fell, Trujillo in Dominican Republic slaughtered 25,000 Haitians.

And they were still bringing Haitians to cut cane after that.

The United States goes in to help Haiti, but today -- you want to come to today -- today, Haiti, the economy in Haiti is controlled by about a half a dozen oligarchs.

And any person of worth that goes into Haiti meets up against these oligarchs.

And they're silver-tongued people.

They know how to talk.

They know how to talk the money out of these people.

And they make -- >> Now, oligarchs -- that sounds like a term from Russia.

>> [ Laughs ] Yes, but oligarchs are all over the place.

These are the powerful people that control the economy.

And they're usually mulatto or white.

>> From your perspective, from your informed perspective, what does the future look like, and what could Americans do to help make the future better?

>> I'm glad you recognized the potential of Haiti.

But before anything is done that will succeed, the first thing that must be done is the corruption must be stopped.

It is a corrupt environment created by the United States with the dictators that they put in power to control the country.

This must be stopped.

If anything must succeed, this corruption must be halted.

And then we can go forward.

Haiti has a tremendous, young population with great potential.

It is a great country with fertile lands and fertile minds.

And it is poised to go forward.

But the corruption is what's holding Haiti back.

If you go into Haiti, you can go in with billions of dollars.

It doesn't matter.

If the corruption is not stopped, nothing will work.

The governments, the United Nations, all of them need to understand and take responsibility for what they've done and allowed to be done to Haiti.

Stop the corruption, and then we can go forward.

>> Roger Persaud, historian, retired airline engineer, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, sir.

It was an honor to be here.

♪ >> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by... Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Over the next 10 years, Comcast is committing $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with the tools and resources they need to be ready for anything.

Additional funding provided by Pfizer.

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