Know Your HERStory

A new blog feature highlighting the women we should know about, but never get told about…

Cecile Fatiman

Cecile was a Haitian Priestess and played a key role in
the Haitian Uprising in August 1791. She presided over a
religious ceremony shortly before the Uprising,
appointing certain people to lead the revolt. Shortly
after the ceremony took place, over 1000 plantations
had been destroyed by the revolutionary freedom
fighters.

The Haitian Uprising is recognised to have played a
significant factor in the beginning of the end of the Slave
Trade. It was the first uprising of its kind where the
revolutionaries repeatedly won and were able to fend off
attempts to re-enslave them. This gave courage and
confidence to other slaves, who began to also rise up in
greater numbers and with greater defiance all across the
Caribbean.

These repeated uprisings, helped to create and feed into
wider conversations about the abolition of the Slave
Trade as a whole.

You may remember being taught about William
Wilberforce, and how he apparently managed to end
slavery (almost single-handedly…supposedly). But the
real shero is Cecile, who’s actions helped to spark one of
the greatest changes in history.