Jean Price-Mars at 150: ANESRS holds a day of commemoration

The National Agency for Higher Education and Scientific Research (ANESRS) held a day of commemoration on Friday 30 October 2026 for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dr Jean Price-Mars, according to Ticket Magazine. Several political figures and university officials attended, the magazine said; its video shows a hall decorated with flowers around a portrait of the writer.

The day is organised with the Haitian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO (CNHCU) and the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MENFP), Le Nouvelliste had announced. Its theme is "Ainsi parla l'oncle: memory, identity and national pride", after Price-Mars's best-known book, and it is held in a hybrid format, in person and online. Pupils, students, teachers, researchers and the general public were invited to take part.

The "master thinker" of 20th-century Haiti

Born on 15 October 1876 in Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, and dying in Pétion-Ville on 1 March 1969, Jean Price-Mars was a physician, ethnologist, diplomat, senator and minister. In Ainsi parla l'oncle (So Spoke the Uncle), published in 1928, he defended the African share of Haitian culture, then looked down on by part of the elite. He founded the Institute of Ethnology in 1941 and in 1956, in Paris, presided over the first Congress of Black Writers and Artists.

The detailed programme of the day and the list of speakers had not been made public at the time of publication.