Jacques Vincent Ogé

Vincent Ogé, (c. 1755-91), was a free man of color in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Though he was not a slave, Ogé was an important figure in the events that led to the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Ogé was the son of a white colonist and a mulatto woman. By the 1780s he owned valuable real estate in the major colonial city of Cap Français, today's Cap Haitien, as well as small boats that participated in the coastal trade. In the late 1780s he went to France on business, and became active in the French Revolution. In Paris he joined Julien Raimond in trying to convince the Constituent Assembly to overturn colonial racism against wealthy free men like himself. In October 1790, Ogé returned to Saint-Domingue, believing that at ambiguous law passed in March of that year had given him the right to vote in upcoming colonial elections. When the colonial governor Count de Blanchelande refused his demands for voting rights, Ogé and several hundred men of color armed themselves and won a few battles against colonial militias from Cap Français. Ultimately, they fled to Spanish territory to escape a large royal force. After receiving guarantees of their safety, they were turned back to the French. Ogé and his associates were brutally executed. He became an important symbol for both free people and slaves of the injustices of a colonial society that wanted to restrict the benefits of the French Revolution to whites.

External links

• The Louverture Project: Vincent_Ogé