Toussaint Louverture

Fig.1: "Turn around, the revolt is
back there!"

There are a lot of sucky things about slavery. But probably the worst part about it of all was that once you were a slave, chances are you'd be a slave for the rest of your life. Sure, there have been a bunch of slave revolts throughout history, but rarely do they get very far, and even the "successful" ones get squashed in the end (just ask Spartacus, if you can pinpoint which one he is). The glaring exception is the revolt against colonialism and forced servitude on the Caribbean island now known as Hispaniola, led by a man who called himself Toussaint Louverture (fig.1). While he was not a slave at the time the revolt began, nor did he initiate the revolt, nor did he live to see it finish (man, that's a lot of qualifiers), his impact on the events in French-held Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 led directly to the independence and rule by former slaves in the western part of the island, now called Haiti. As such, he is considered to be a founding father of his country, on par with contemporaries like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (I see no irony there whatsoever).