Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, the first Haitian anthropologist, was born 128 years ago.

128 years ago, on November 6, 1898, Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain was born in Port-au-Prince. She was Haiti's first female anthropologist and a specialist in Creole and folklore.

A committed family

She was the daughter of Eugénie Malbranche and Georges Sylvain, a key figure in the resistance to the American occupation. Her sisters, Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau and Yvonne Sylvain, as well as her brother, Normil Sylvain, also left their mark.

From Paris to London

After studying in Kingston and Port-au-Prince, she wrote a thesis at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, under the supervision of Marcel Mauss. She studied the country's folktales and the origins of Creole, a language then considered minor. Bronislaw Malinowski called her to London as a research assistant. Her work at the British Museum informed her study of the African roots of Haitian Creole. She published *Les Contes haïtiens* in 1937 and *Le Roman de Bouqui* in 1940.

From the Haitian field to Africa

From 1947 to 1949, at the request of Alfred Métraux, she conducted research in the Marbial Valley with her husband, the anthropologist Jean Comhaire, for a UNESCO project on basic education. She later worked in Kenscoff, Kinshasa, Lomé, and Nsukka, and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. The author of more than 200 articles, she died in a car accident in Nigeria on June 20, 1975.