Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 225

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(HAITI.) Marian Neal. Diary of a Carnegie aid investigator in Haiti. [57] manuscript pages. 4to, Royal composition book with original boards bearing author's name; several leaves torn out, a few moderate paper clip stains, otherwise just minor wear. Haiti, 1950
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Marian Neal (1923-2012) went to Haiti on behalf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was sent to review the work of a troubled UNESCO project to improve literacy in southern Haiti's Marbial Valley. This notebook contains her background research on the project, and her diary-like notes on a tour which began on 3 September 1950 with brief stops in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

In Haiti, Neal interviews numerous local and international officials. One complains about Port-au-Prince's lavish 1949 bicentennial celebration: "With the $20 million put into the exposition, Lévilau could have knocked down every hovel on Port-au-Prince and built decent quarters for all." She notes how the UNESCO project's location was chosen: "Marbial chosen by Minister of Education who owed a debt of honor to the local priest." The United Nations agent A.J. Wakefield dealt with political instability. After a May 1950 coup unseated President Dumarsais Estimé, "Estimé took his files with him. The junta didn't even know who Wakefield was." One informant observed that "it is the Americans who are resented, first because of the American occupation and second because the American investors who have come here have obviously been interested only in what they could get out of the country. May have looked with pity on these poor people and may offer largesse in order to be known as humanitarians, but never really wanted to help the Haitians." An American doctor was sent to replace a French delegation: "[Leon] Bickham's language barrier means that he cannot work in Marbial. Wants someone else who knows language to go out here--is an Amer. Negro." Near the end of the volume, Neal devotes part of a page to a crude musical notation, the melody for "Magloire Song," apparently in honor of the president who took control in the 1950 coup.

The author was raised in Tenafly, NJ, attended Wellesley College, and resided in New York when these notes were taken. As Marian Neal Ash, she was later the longtime executive editor of Yale University Press. See the York (PA) Dispatch, 5 March 1951 for a story on her investigation of the Marbial project.

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