Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones (1920) was Eugene O'Neill's expressionist play about a Black Caribbean ruler — loosely based on Henri Christophe — whose authority collapses as he flees through a jungle haunted by racial memory. The play reached mass audiences through its Broadway run and a 1933 film, making it one of the most influential US cultural representations of Haiti and Black leadership during the occupation era. It reproduced tropes of tropical savagery and psychological regression that shaped American public understanding of Haiti.