"He was one of the leaders. There were others: Boukman, a Jamaican who in 1791 organized a Vodou ceremony where people pledged to fight for liberty or to die. There was Mackandal. And then L’Ouverture, who was on a plantation, who started organizing, and had military training. There were also leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose motto was, “Cut their heads off, burn their houses.” L’Ouverture was taken from Haiti and imprisoned in France, where he died. Wordsworth wrote a poem about him. One of L’Ouverture’s most quoted sayings was, when he was about to be taken off by the French, “You can cut the branches of the tree of liberty, but you can’t destroy the roots because they are too strong and too many.” He was a phenomenal leader, but it’s important to acknowledge the others. Because it’s a problem we have thinking that one person can make a revolution, whether it’s now or in the past."
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Edwidge Danticat Interview (2003)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture
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Toussaint Louverture
François-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture (20 May 1743 – 7 April 1803) also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture or Toussaint Bréda, was the best-known leader of the Haitian Revolution.
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