been staged. Dessalines Hill and Hatch describe Dessalines as a "romantic melodrama written in blank verse". The titular character and male lead of Dessalines is Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a key figure in Haiti's early military and political history. The plot concerns Dessalines's exploits and his relationship with Clarisse, a (probably) mythical figure who converts him to Christianity. Byrd and Twa note that the play glosses over Dessalines's "massacres" and "despotism" in favor of a focus on religious and romantic themes. Byrd argues that Dessalines should be interpreted in light of late 19th-century views of Black masculinity in America. The ideology of white supremacy painted Black people—and in, particular, Black men—as weak, uncivilized, and incapable of running their own affairs. In the view of a number of contemporary Black intellectuals, the example of Haiti and its revolution provided a counterpoint to this ideological fiction: Haiti was an independent republic, like the United States, which had expelled its colonial governors and created a new nation. In his preface to Dessalines, Easton lamented what he saw as a failure to properly memorialize the heroic deeds of Black people:The Negro alone fails to immortalize his distinguished dead, and leaves to the prejudiced pen of other races, the office, which, by a proper conception of duty to posterity, very properly becomes his duty. … … the author of this work hopes to see a happier era inaugurated by the constant production of legitimate drama, written exclusively for Negro players and meeting, he hopes, with the full endorsement of the brother in white. For the reasons, as above enumerated, has the author presumed to lay on the altar of race pride the dramatic tale of the heroic Dessalines.The Chicago premiere of Dessalines was at Freiburg's Opera House, on 22nd Street, in September 1893. It featured "a complete cast of colored characters". Henrietta Vinton Davis played Clarisse. The premiere was scheduled to coincide with the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition, but was not billed officially as part of the Exhibition program. Rather, Twa observes that it was staged in "protest against the Exposition's exclusion of African Americans in its planning and the rejection of many proposals for exhibits to display the accomplishments of African Americans". Hill and Hatch count two other runs of Dessalines: one in Pittsburgh in 1909, which Davis directed and starred in; and one in Boston in 1930, in a company led by Maud Cuney Hare.