Black Hamlet - Part I

Destination Freedom Destination Freedom, dramatization of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people, is brought to you by Station WMAQ as a part of the pageant of history and of America's own destination freedom. Out of the chaotic 18th century's grab for goods and gold and land and slaves to milk the magic out of the new land, there are rows three giants from among the slaves of the Caribbean.

to San Lovitur, Desilene and Henri Christophe, Giants who liberated the island of Haiti and established a new state. Destination Freedom tells the story of one of these new world liberators. In a chapter entitled Black Hamlet, we bring you the first section from the life story of King Henri Christophe of Haiti.

In Haiti, in the heart of the Caribbean, there's an old legend about the waves that licked the side of the mountains like hungry tongues. They say a twilight on the mountain near the northern coast that juts out from the land like a devil's fist.

King Christoph walks as he walked a hundred years ago when he first climbed the cliffs upon which he built his castle and in which he destroyed himself. They say King Christoph begins to walk the lonely halls of his castle in his tomb and retraces the steps that brought him from the rock piles on the island of Granada to the

high mountains of Haiti. In the darkness of his corridor they say the dead king walked, and recalls the day he watched the older slaves tramp single-file carrying stones to build a fortress. They watched idly while the overseer called out, and Farron the plantation master had come down to watch, and he was impatient.