Rich Benjamin's grandfather, Daniel Fignolé, was a popular Haitian labor leader who became Haiti's president in 1957. After just 19 days in office, he was overthrown by a military coup, and was sent to the U.S. His 13 year-old daughter (Benjamin's mother) was taken by soldiers and sexually assaulted. She was eventually reunited with her parents in America, where they were refugees. Rich Benjamin talks with Terry Gross about his family's history and resilience. His memoir is Talk to Me.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the historical significance of Rich Benjamin's family in Haiti?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. One night, when my guest Rich Benjamin's mother was staying over at his Brooklyn apartment, he awoke to her screaming, Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me! She was having a nightmare. Here's the backstory. Her father, Rich Benjamin's grandfather, was appointed president of Haiti by a temporary government in 1957.
But 19 days after taking office, he was overthrown by a military coup. Soldiers with submachine guns stormed into a cabinet meeting, took him away, and gave him a letter of resignation to sign. His wife was also kidnapped by soldiers. They were both ejected and sent to the U.S. Soldiers also came for the president's children, including Benjamin's mother, who was 13 at the time.
The children were taken to barracks where his mother was raped. She never got over the terror of that day. Through her aunt's negotiations with the military government, she was able to get out of confinement and go to New York, where she was reunited with her parents. The family never really talked about the coup and the trauma.
It wasn't until Benjamin went to Haiti to help after the 2010 earthquake that he decided to do some research to better understand his family and himself. As part of his research, he sued the U.S. State Department to get access to classified documents, which revealed the U.S. played a role in the coup. His new memoir is called Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History.
It's also about being black, the son of immigrants, and gay. He says he's enjoyed advantage and endured exclusion. Benjamin's first book, published in 2009, is called Searching for Whitetopia, An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. Rich Benjamin, welcome to Fresh Air. What did you learn about the Eisenhower administration's role in overthrowing your grandfather's presidency?
Terry, first of all, it's great to be here. It's great to have you. Thank you. Thank you. What I learned in writing this book is that executives of American corporations after my grandfather assumed Haiti's presidency called the White House directly to ask them to intervene. In those phone conversations, they called him a rabble-rouser. They said he wasn't fit to be president.
And I think a lot of their gripe was he had been a labor leader on the ground. And also, what was fascinating is looking at the national security meeting held at 8 a.m. in the White House the day after my grandfather was inaugurated. Eisenhower was there. Dulles, the head of the CIA, was there. The other Dulles, his brother, who was Secretary of State, was there.
All of the national security team was, and they discussed what to do about this predicament.
So you said your grandfather was a labor leader, but he was more than just a labor leader. He was very popular, very charismatic, and was able to organize mass protests.
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Chapter 2: How did the U.S. influence the coup in Haiti in 1957?
I learned about racial segregation that largely wasn't consciously racial. People were lured by these towns for better homes, more home for your dollar, beautiful natural resources, lakes, running trails, hospitals. And yet there was a lot of implicit bias. It was kind of white flight 3.0. And these places are Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Forsyth County, Georgia, St. George, Utah.
There are a lot of white-topias in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And so some experts call these the excerpts, but they're not just the excerpts. They're white excerpts that are getting even whiter. And the prescience of this book was to understand what a big deal immigration is to these residents, these white voters, and to learn how dissatisfied they were with the ways this country was going.
Tell us more about what you found about immigration.
Oh, my goodness. For example, when I was in St. George, Utah, I sat in on a local group called the Citizens Council Against Illegal Immigration. And every week, local people would convene to figure out how they could combat immigration. And I interviewed them, and they would say things like, the California of my youth isn't what it is now. And I'm using their words now.
It's just overridden and infested by immigrants. And so they were battering down the hatches. They felt that... Places like California, Texas and Florida were becoming too brown and too immigrant. And so they would go to these white topias and they would discuss immigration.
I know there were a lot of golf courses in the places that you visited and you played golf with a whole lot of people who you interviewed. What about guns?
There was a huge gun culture in Whitopia. In Kootenai County, there were more gun dealers than gas stations when I was there. And so there's this... idolatry of guns and the Second Amendment. And surely enough, after I wrote in these books, these issues of immigration and property values and guns just blew up.
And by the way, I learned a lot about people's antipathy towards the government in these communities. And so what the book does is It really is prescient in terms of the Tea Party movement that would come about, and it was prescient in terms of Trumpism.
So what did you learn in terms of thoughts about diversity? Because right now there's an emphasis of cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, throughout the federal government.
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