As a historian of Haitian literature and culture, I was excited to learn that Haiti plays a central role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” There are two lengthy scenes that take place in the Caribbean nation and feature original footage shot in the country. 

It’s a fitting gesture: The fictional kingdom of Wakanda has a real-life corollary in the historic Kingdom of Hayti, which existed as a sort of Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere from 1811 to 1820. 

The Haitian Revolution led to the creation of the first free Black state in the Americas. But the world was hardly expecting a former enslaved man named Henry Christophe to make himself the king of it. 

Media accounts from the era, some of which I’ve collected in a digital archive, serve as a window into a brief period of time when the kingdom stood as a beacon of Black freedom in a world of slavery. Yet, like Wakanda, the Kingdom of Hayti wasn’t a utopia for everyone.