Dutty Boukman

Dutty Boukman was a leader of the Haitian Revolution, born to a Muslim family in Senegambia in about 1767 and enslaved first in Jamaica and then in Saint-Domingue. Sold for trying to teach other enslaved people to read, he became a slave driver and later a coach driver, which let him travel between plantations, carry news and encourage resistance. According to some contemporary accounts, he and the priestess Cécile Fatiman presided over the ceremony at Bois Caïman in August 1791, and on 22 August he led the rising at the Noé sugar refinery, usually taken as the start of the revolt. He was killed by French soldiers in November 1791 defending a rebel base.