Handling Haiti in HUAC-Era Hollywood

This chapter focuses on Lydia Bailey (20th C.-Fox, 1952), Hollywood’s only film set during the Haitian Revolution. This romance-adventure hybrid (by Philip Dunne and Michael Blankfort) placed fictional white Americans alongside real figures such as Toussaint Louverture. Lydia Bailey was acclaimed in 1952 as a groundbreaking change in how Hollywood portrayed Black History. The chapter argues that Lydia Bailey, representing a particular moment in postwar and Cold War cinema, was antiracist and forward-thinking in many ways. It supported the idea of decolonization and justified the violence of Haitian revolutionaries against colonists seeking to reenslave them. Nevertheless, it contained stereotypes about Haiti and Blacks in general. The chapter also asks: How did House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings affect the film’s production? How was it received by white and African American viewers in the U.S., and by audiences in Haiti, France and elsewhere? And why has it fallen into obscurity?