BOOK NOOK: Why did some people feel like they had to demonize Haitian immigrants?

The book was “Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons” by Benjamin Barson. I experienced some difficulty reading it. I think the title alone goes a long way toward explaining why I was having such a hard time. I mean, look at the title, what on earth does it mean?

When I interviewed the author I asked him to explain his title. It took him ten minutes to do it. His book is like that, dense, full of words and terms unfamiliar to me, and possibly to you too. For starters, what the heck is brassroots democracy? I had no clue. It turns out Barson made up the term.

This weighty academic tome examines how the brass bands that flourished in New Orleans after the Civil War and into the 1900s were more than just musical groups, they were, according to the author, incubators of liberation. Who knew? I certainly didn’t. After slavery officially ended many former slaves remained in another form of servitude.

Barson looks at how sugar cane plantations were horrible places to work. Before the Civil War some slaves who had escaped created remote communities where they grew crops to feed themselves. They certainly weren’t growing sugar cane.

A timely theme in the book is the history of immigrants from Haiti. Haitians were treated with suspicion in southern states Why was that? It had much to do with the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.

During one period part of the island was the French colony of Saint-Domingue-slaves worked under brutal conditions on sugar cane plantations. They revolted, overthrowing the French. Haiti became the first country in the Americas to abolish slavery. White plantation owners in Louisiana regarded Haitians as troublemakers. Some things never change.

Barson dives deep into the music of the era and explains that a woman working in a brothel wrote a highly influential blues composition. There’s a lot here but it is not that easy to decipher. The author writes in an academic style. I would read sentences and have no clue what they meant.

I wasn’t going to review this book. But I keep thinking about hard working Haitian immigrants in Springfield and how fearful they must be right now. I wondered, why are some people still so nervous about Haitians? When I saw they got eight inches of snow in New Orleans that freakish reality made me recognize I needed to write about this important if somewhat incomprehensible book.