Some people say that Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, is cursed.

It's been racked by hunger, political violence, coups, assassinations, and natural disasters.

This morning, a country in crisis. People tearing through rubble to find any signs of life

after a monstrous 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday devastated southwest Haiti.

Now tropical storm graces forecast to hit Haiti by tomorrow bringing punishing rain that

could lead to flash flooding and new mudslides. Yet another blow to a country in crisis.

But way back, it was one of the most valuable pieces of land on the planet.

White colonizers arrived on the island and set up the first European settlement in the Americas.

They eventually killed off the island's original inhabitants, the Taino,

brought in in slave Africans, and for hundreds of years, Europeans, the Spanish, and then the French.

Devoured, exported, and exploited anything and everything from the island.

Tobacco, sugar, coffee, and black bodies.

And they did so with violence. Colonial Haiti, or Saint Domingue, as it was known early on,

has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave labor colonies to have ever existed.

But then, in 1791, an army of enslaved black people led by General Tussant Leotvature

revolted. For the next dozen years, Black Haitians waged war against the French for their freedom.

Eventually, the Haitians won, defeating the mighty French army and their leader, Napoleon.

It's the only successful slave revolt in history, and Haiti would become the world's first Black

led republic. But generations of Haitians would pay a steep price for that freedom. A price,

they're still paying to this day. It's been economically isolated, politically manipulated,

and marked by much of the west of the world as a pariah. Haiti isn't cursed. It's condemned.

Unforgivable Blackness. Unforgivable Blackness. They revolted, they rebelled, they showed

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