❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁’s Reviews > Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas > Status Update

“ François Makandal was much more than simply a maroon leader. He had a long-term plan for the island and saw the maroons as the "center of an organized resistance of the blacks against the whites," stressed an eighteenth-century French document. He used practical symbolism to explain his vision for Saint-Domingue. One day, in front of a crowd, he put three handkerchiefs in a water container: one was yellow, one white, and one black. He took the yellow one out and said, "Here are the first inhabitants of Saint Domingue, they were yellow. Here are the present inhabitants" —and he showed the white handkerchief-"here, at last, are those who will remain the masters of the island; it is the black handkerchief. “