Eliezer Cadet
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Lecba Elizier Cadet (born c. May 1897) was a Haitian Vodou priest who, in 1919 attended the Paris Peace Conference and First Pan African Congress on behalf of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, and Amy Ashwood Garvey. The Pan-Africa ...
(UNIA).


Family, education, and early life

Eliezer was born in
Port-de-Paix Port-de-Paix (; ht, Pòdepè or ; meaning "Port of Peace") is a List of communes of Haiti, commune and the capital of the Nord-Ouest (department), Nord-Ouest Departments of Haiti, department of Haiti on the Atlantic coast. It has a population of ...
,
Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
, the son of Mesinor Pierre Cadet, a wealthy
dyewood A dyewood is any of a number of varieties of wood which provide dyes for textiles and other purposes. Among the more important are: * Brazilwood or Brazil from Brazil, producing a red dye. *Catechu or cutch from Acacia wood, producing a dark bro ...
manufacturer. He attended the College of
Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague is a primary and secondary Roman Catholic school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was founded and is run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction (FIC) (''Frères de l'instruction chrétienne de Ploërmel''). The ...
and subsequently supported himself as a car mechanic in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. There he met
Nancy Cunard Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
.


Paris Peace conference

Initially, the International League for Darker People, an umbrella organisation comprising the UNIA, had planned to send
Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for ...
and A. Philip Randolph as delegates, with Cadet as interpreter. But as US authorities denied both Wells and Randolph passports and visas, the UNIA's Cadet, a Haitian national, became the organisations' sole delegate. Cadet left the US at the end of February 1919 for
Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...
, returning on December 1, 1919, to New York. While in Paris, his efforts to contact official delegates were mostly unsuccessful, except for a meeting with Liberian delegate
Charles D. B. King Charles Dunbar Burgess King (12 March 1875 – 4 September 1961) was a Liberian politician who served as the 17th president of Liberia from 1920 to 1930. He was of Americo-Liberian and Sierra Leone Creole descent. He was a member of the True Whig ...
, who refused to support the UNIA's demand that control of the former German colonies should be given to Africans and the African diaspora. Cadet's reports to
Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...
, claiming that his efforts had been sabotaged by the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
s delegate W. E. B. Du Bois, led to a break between Garvey and Du Bois.Colin Grant: ''Negro With a Hat. The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey'', Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 176-83.


Later life

Cadet went on to become a Hougan (Vodou priest) associated with the
loa ( ), also called loa or loi, are spirits in the African diasporic religion of Haitian Vodou. They have also been incorporated into some revivalist forms of Louisiana Voodoo. Many of the lwa derive their identities in part from deities venerat ...
Damballa Damballa, also spelled Damballah, Dambala, Dambalah, among other variations ( ht, Danbala), is one of the most important of all loa, spirits in Haitian Voodoo and other African diaspora religious traditions such as Obeah. He is traditionally po ...
.


References

Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League members Haitian pan-Africanists Haitian Vodou practitioners Year of death uncertain 1897 births Haitian emigrants to the United States {{Africandiaspora-stub