Westenley Alcenat on “Children of Africa, Shall be Haytians”

Thomas Thurston talks with Westenley Alcenat on his book project “Children of Africa, Shall be Haytians: Prince Saunders, Revolutionary Transnationalism & the Origins of Black Emigration”.

Westenley Alcenat is a scholar, teacher, and academic consultant. His primary focus is the African American protest tradition, political and intellectual thought in the nineteenth century, and the Haitian Revolution’s legacy and influence on Black American radicalism. He teaches United States, Atlantic, and Afro-Caribbean history at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was previously a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s School of the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS) and a visiting PhD candidate at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History (WIGH) at Harvard University. Wes is Haitian born and partly grew up in Minnesota, where he was educated in the Minneapolis Public Schools. He lives in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn with his pet rabbit, BB King.