02/12/2025
Foreign powers feared Dessalines.
Foreign powers feared Sankara.
Because both men proved something the world cannot allow Black people to remember:
We are unstoppable when we lead ourselves.
But the parts we never confront and talk about is this:
It wasn’t white hands that delivered the final blow.
It was Black traitors —
Black skin, Black voices, Black smiles —
serving the very powers that hated their own freedom.
Dessalines crushed the strongest empire of his time,
a man born enslaved who destroyed Napoleon’s dream.
Sankara exposed neocolonialism and stood up to every puppet government on the continent.
Both were protected by destiny —
but wounded by betrayal.
Because no matter the century,
no matter the battlefield,
our deepest wound keeps coming from the same place:
A Black traitor with no spine
is more deadly than an entire foreign army.
Dessalines didn’t fall to France —
he fell to men who marched beside him,
men who shared his ancestors’ blood
but not their courage.
Sankara didn’t fall to imperialism —
he fell to a “brother” who saw power and chose cowardice over country.
Foreign powers didn’t have to invade.
They didn’t have to shoot.
All they had to do was buy one Black soul,
whisper in one weak ear,
and watch our greatest defenders be taken out from behind.
And until we confront THAT truth — not dance around it, not soften it —
we will keep losing giants to small men.
Dessalines showed us what freedom LOOKS like.
Sankara showed us what dignity SOUNDS like.
Both showed us WHO the real enemy uses
when they want a revolution to die.
Revolution will never be safe
until the Black traitor becomes impossible to find.
Long live Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Long live Captain Thomas Sankara.
Long live every Black revolutionary who died
because they chose liberation over loyalty to oppressors.
