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Racial Tension Between Haitians And African Americans

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Section 1: My great grandfather was a native resident of Haiti. He was alive during the very hostile period of persecution by the Dominican Republic. They were discriminated against solely because the Dominicans believed that Haitians were “blacker” than them because of their mostly African roots and felt they weren’t good enough to share the island of Hispaniola with. This racial tension between the two cultures is what led to the rift between the countries. This intense discrimination was also supported and reinforced by some government leaders at some points. In 1937, Rafael Trujillo, the president at that time, ordered the execution of every single Haitian person living on the Dominican-Haitian border. The total amount of deaths ranges from a low 547 to over 30,000 due to numerous firsthand accounts. …show more content…

That’s the only thing that came to his mind after what he had just witnessed. Run. Maybe they had seen him and were now following him? Faster. His legs could barely hold his weight anymore. Just a bit farther. Before he knew it, he was banging at the door to the small shanty shack. His youngest son, my grandfather, must have let him in. Quickly. The family fled the house with only the clothes on their back and what little money they could scrape together. When they reached the edge of the forest, that’s when it began. Pow, clank, boom they went. Very rapid, sharp cracks rang out from behind them. They were quickly followed by screams of pain and terror. They reached my great grandfather’s small fishing boat by midnight. The entire party was silent, minus the unrelenting war sounds echoing throughout the

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