Self-Determining Haiti

The foreword, dated October 1920, says the articles first appeared in The Nation in the summer of 1920 and that the censorship had prevented the full story from being told. The pamphlet is published by The Nation and presents the NAACP investigation of the American occupation of Haiti.

Johnson argues that the National City Bank of New York controls the Banque Nationale d'Haïti and holds the Haitian national funds collected by American officials, and that its vice-president R. L. Farnham acts as the State Department's representative in these matters. He reports that interest on the internal and, with one exception, the external debt was in default despite pledged revenues, and that a loan of $30,000,000 or more had been promised as part of American help. He also discusses the Creole language, which he describes as a barrier to literacy for the majority. The pamphlet closes with documents from The Nation of August 28 and September 11, 1920, including the Fuller convention proposed in 1915 and letters exchanged in Port-au-Prince in August 1920.