Code Noir

But behind this wealth was severe blood, sweat, and extreme suffering of those that were enslaved.

In 1685, the King of France issued what became infamously known as Code Noir or the Black Code.

And the king essentially established through this document that slavery was was officially legal, giving plantation owners absolute control over the enslaved Africans.

And the purpose of Code Noir was essentially to further exploit, control, and dehumanize the enslaved Africans while justifying slavery through Catholicism.

So the goal of Code Noir was really to do a couple of things.

It was to focus on complete and total erasure of the African identity and culture It was designed to legalize extreme violence against enslaved Africans.

And it sought to ensure that the enslaved Africans continued to remain powerless, to reinforce this idea of powerlessness in order for them to continue to leverage the wealth of the island through the labor of the enslaved Africans.

All the laws of enslavement that was put into place that really ratcheted up the already extreme conditions.

As we'll examine later in this video, some of this blending occurred from Africans who brought Africanized versions of Catholicism from the continent.

After all, Christianity had already been introduced to West Central Africa centuries before by the Portuguese, but this blending also occurred by force under the colonial rulers, especially in 1685 when King Louis XIV issued the Code Noir, which set rules for the treatment of enslaved people and also decreed that missionaries should try converting them to Christianity.

Vodou played a major role in throwing off colonial rule during the Haitian Revolution.

On the night of August 14th, 1791, a group of enslaved Africans met at Bois Caïman, or Alligator Forest, for what has been variously described as both a political rally and a religious ceremony led by a Vodou priest, Dutty Boukman, and priestess Cecile Fatiman.

you know, Mia had an incredible speech.

She talked about a lot of things, but the few things that stood out to me that I had never heard of before, Code Noir, which is like a French code that basically was like a slave code for French colonies, things like Louisiana and all the French colonized islands.

But The one thing, the reason why that stood out to me was because you hear, we've heard a lot of conversation about reparations, and while I know Barrios has an important, while I knew Barrios had an important part in it, I didn't necessarily see the through line, but I saw it Through her speech.

Ghana, where historically the Ivory Coast, a lot of people were taken from them.

She was a prominent wealthy socialite who operated completely above the law.

She bypassed the Code Noir, the laws governing the treatment of enslaved people, and implemented her own private regime of torture.

Right.

It wasn't until a fire deliberately set by a desperate, abused 70-year-old enslaved cook in 1834 that authorities discovered an attic filled with horrifically tortured people.