Thinkers Timeline

Joseph Auguste Anténor Firmin was a Haitian lawyer, politician, and pioneering anthropologist. He may be the first Black anthropologist in history. He was born on 18 October 1850 in Cap-Haïtien, in the north of Haiti, to a working-class family. Haiti had been independent for only 46 years. The country was still recovering from the revolution and from the huge payments France had demanded for recognising its freedom. Firmin was a brilliant student. He taught himself Greek, Latin, and French, which he later taught to others. He studied law and became a lawyer by 1875. He was active in liberal politics. He founded a newspaper, Le Messager du Nord, which supported reform. Political turmoil pushed him into government service and then abroad. In 1883, he was appointed Haitian ambassador to France and moved to Paris. While in Paris, a French doctor invited him to join the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, the leading anthropology society of its day. He attended meetings regularly. But the society was dominated by racist 'scientific' theories that claimed white people were superior. Firmin sat through meeting after meeting, knowing the other members saw him as inferior. He tried to speak only twice. Both times he was cut off or insulted. So he wrote a book instead. De l'égalité des races humaines (The Equality of the Human Races) appeared in 1885. It was 662 pages long and had taken him eighteen months to write. It systematically destroyed the racist anthropology of his time. It was almost completely ignored. Firmin returned to Haiti and had a difficult political career. He served as foreign minister, ran for president twice, and led two failed revolts. He died in exile on the island of St. Thomas on 19 September 1911, aged 60. His book was only rediscovered and translated into English in 2000, 115 years after it was written.