Dessalines creates the flag of Haiti, 1804

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Caption: The scene is the creation in 1804 of the flag of Haiti. At the ceremony when General Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Saint Domingue from France, thus creating the independent Republic of Haiti, General Dessaliness seized the French tricolor and ripped from it the band of white stretching across the center section. The gesture indicated that the former colony would not longer be a colony dominated by whites but would be a Republic of the Blacks. Off to the right sits the Haitian version of Betsy Ross, who stitched together the section of blue and red, thus uniting the peoples of the island into one nation.