Haiti History 101: Haiti by the Decades, the 1920s

In the 1920s, Haiti was being occupied by the U.S. Marines. Here we see a group of U.S. Marine soldiers patrolling the countryside, their rifles on their side, in this photo taken in 1921.

This is what a typical street looked like that same year in the capital of Port au Prince.

Haiti 1926: This is the capital of Port au Prince. These are the women who’ve ran Haiti from the beginning, its businesswomen! Madan Sara, they’re called!

At the beginning of the decade, Haiti’s president was this man seen here in this photo…Sudre Dartiguenave. This long, stylish mustache was extremely popular during that era.

Catholicism continued to have a strong influence as well on the culture of Haiti. Here are some nuns, posing in front of a convent. in addition to Haitian nuns, nuns came from France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and settled in Haiti, and educated the children of Haiti. Lots of schools were ran by them. This photo is dated 1921.

These men are making chairs from scratch! But they’re not exactly willing workers. They were in prison at the time. Back in the 1920s in Haiti, accused criminals were put into forced labor, from building roads, to doing other constructive things like making furniture.

During this lovely decade in Haiti, Haiti had pretty much caught up with the rest of the world in terms of luxuries. Here, a car is passing by in the not so paved road in the city of St Marc. Looks like some of the road workers had to give the driver a hand.

No wonder so many Haitian little girls want to be nurses. They have it in the blood! Here stands a Haitian head nurse with other nurses in her charge. This photo is from 1921 Haiti.

These men may look elegant, but they were partaking in the not-so-elegant sport of cockfighting! Those poor roosters. Those men sure are handsome.

A teacher poses with his students. The school building is too shabby to be housing the elite’s children, yet their style of dress indicates that they weren’t exactly paupers either, so most likely these pupils were children of the working class.

Around this time in Haiti, Haitian coffee was a big export. Here are some workers sifting coffee.

A soldier, who looks very much like a modern day Park Ranger.

There you have it, some really telling photographs of the Haiti of the 1920s.

All photos from the Schomberg Research Center of NY.