This is a story that I wrote for my Senior Religious Studies seminar at East Carolina University in the Fall of 2005.
It is based on the true story of my ancestors.
It is my reflection on the implication of that story and the time and place of it.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2005
Saint Domingue and Gregoires
August 8, 2010
American Airlines flight 822 was canceled Tuesday due to Hurricane Alex coming into the area. My tour of Robert F. Williams’ activities in Cuba was over and I had set a two day schedule to check out my connection to Haiti. Two days was definitely not enough to research the Gregoire presence in Saint Domingue. I have Alex to thank for what I discovered.
The book “Negroes with Guns” led me to “Radio Free Dixie.” The fact the author of “Dixie” just happened to be the author of “Blood Done Sign My Name” and a fellow “Preacher’s Kid” was most certainly a sign. “Blood” was an excellent book about Tyson’s father’s bold stance against the racial violence that prevailed in his hometown of Oxford, NC. Tyson’s father lost his Methodist ministry in Oxford and the family had to move on to the next calling. I felt a kinship to Tim Tyson, as my own father had taken bold stances and been forced out of churches.
I was able to get in touch with Tyson back in May. He pointed me in the right direction with regard to getting in to explore the presence of Williams on the island of Cuba. I was able to move without hassle after Tyson briefed me on how to work the Cuban government. Thank goodness I had those years of Spanish in high school and college, as well. I could almost see Williams’ ghost sitting in front of the microphone, drawing on his military training and his experience with racial oppression to force the issue of the position of the marginalized African Americans. Though Williams upset the Soviet presence in Cuba and the American Communist Party with his broadcasts, he was still able to maintain the respect of Cuban revolutionary Che’ Guevara.
An obviously conflicted man, Williams advocated near military preparation on the part of the black community. It was strange to think that Williams was in the same organization as Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. DuBois, but that’s what research is: discovering and understanding new points of view.
At the end of my time in Cuba, I was beginning to gain the introduction of the motivating factors for Williams to advocate answering violence with violence. I especially understood the notion when I began to shift gears on my flight to Port-au-Prince.
On the flight over, I thought about my family history. It’s hard for me to fathom that the Gregoire family actually were slave owners and sugar planters on Hispaniola. I couldn’t imagine how those Gregoires must have treated their slaves. In the context of my mind, however, I assumed the worst and with that I had no trouble with wrapping my mind around the notion that one of those slaves would have slit the throat of a Gregoire during the activities the Haitian Revolution.
Toussaint L’Ouverture was certainly more diplomatic than violent in his movement, but he was a talented military mind much like Robert F. Williams. General Dessalines struck me as a rightfully pissed off new Haitian. It was in his spirit of things, that most of the Gregoire family was murdered. “Kill Whitey!” was a phrase that came to mind as I sifted through my Hurricane Alex granted material. I got the impression that living as a slave under the conditions on a Santo Domingo sugar plantation was much like being crushed into disease infested mound of soil by a giant white hand. I thought that I might grab a sharpened stick and start stabbing that hand myself. Whispering injustice under those conditions would have accomplished nothing. I understood the violence motivator.
However, there he was. A slave of French Roman Catholic sugar planters found his former master wandering the streets of Port-au-Prince looking for any glimmer of hope, despite the fact that his whole family had been slaughtered. Caspar Ramsey Gregoire was found by this man in the hectic streets and it struck me to seem like one of those scenes out of a movie, where the murderous villain finds himself to be alone with his longtime rival. Surely the villain will get his due with some dramatic slit of the throat or profound puncture of the innards. This was not the case with Caspar and…there it was…The name…Alexandre! Alexandre spoke the boy’s name and escorted him to the harbor to negotiate his passage off of the violent island. Alexandre found a spot for Caspar on a boat headed for the originally Quaker city of Philadelphia. What a fitting reflection of Alexandre! Philadelphia literally means “loving people.”
Alexandre could have very easily followed the movie plot and extinguished the last of the Gregoires. He chose the less traveled path and spared Caspar. Caspar was taken in by a Presbyterian family in Philadelphia, and Gregoire became Gregory. It’s no wonder that, in the summer of 1967, my father, Henry Duval Gregory IV, found himself speaking to Martin Luther King, Jr. about working to get the United States of America out of Vietnam. As a family, we owe it to Alexandre. We are, by debt, pacifists. With one slit of the throat, I could not even be writing this today. To Alexandre go profound thoughts of gratitude!
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The preceding was my fictionalized account of the research I would very much like to accomplish in the coming years. The story of the salvation of our family is most certainly true, except for knowing the name of the Gregoire family slave. If anyone has any knowledge of the events that took place on the island of Hispaniola around the time of the Hatian Revolution, please contact me, as I wish to trace the path back!
Most humbly and peacefully submitted,
Asa Abraham Gregory