Cécile Fatiman’s (Iman’s) Story
The fire that sparked a nation, and inspired a legacy.
Thirteen years before Haiti became the world’s first Black republic, there was a woman standing in the woods, calling a people to freedom.
Her name was Cécile Fatiman—a seasoned manbo (Vodou priestess), healer, and strategists. For four years she meticulously planned this ceremony/strategy session. Then on August 14, 1791, she stood beside her co-strategist Dutty Boukman and presided over a spiritual ceremony now known as the Bois Caïman ceremony. She planned the ceremony without WhatsApp, social media, mail system and in the shroud of enslavement. They planned it by following the stars and ensuring that the full mooon would light their paths in the night.
The meeting happened in 12 locations, 9 in present day Haiti and 3 in present day Dominican Republic. There were to be a total of 18, but 6 were compromised.
They planned, they were in commune, and they launched a revolution. That night lit the flame of the Haitian Revolution—the first successful slave revolt in world history.
What followed was nothing short of miraculous: a 13-year fight for liberation that birthed Haiti, the hemisphere's first free Black nation. Fatiman went on to serve as a communicator and spiritual advisor throughout the revolution, though her role—like that of many revolutionary women—was gradually pushed to the margins of history.
After the ceremony the bided their time to launch the revolution, 7 days later on August 21.
Little is known about her, she's said to have remarried and lived to be 112 years old. She's said to be the daughter of a enslaved African woman and a Corsican man.
Why We Call This Holding Company Iman’s House
Bois Caïman is French for “Alligator (Caiman) Woods.” For years I understood that to mean that the ceremony happened in a marshy area full of alligators/caimanes. But in August 2020, while traveling to the North of Haiti, I stood on that sacred ground and learned another truth. The locals there don’t call it Bois Caïman. They say it was—and always has been—Bwa Kay Iman: The woods by Iman’s house.
They told me Iman was what she was called.
That the revolution began at the woods right by her home.
And that the forest witnessed her fire.
There's not much there to honor her, but the locals are working on it.
Memory vs. Myth
Many modern historians, often not from Haiti, reduce this story to lore. They call it myth, embellishment, folklore. But if you ask us this alternative story, feels in line with how histories of Black women were re-written.
This story:
One where a Black woman lit the match.
One where everything started with her.
How poetic, how devastatingly familiar, that a Black woman who gave birth to revolution, would later be erased from its center.
That’s why this company bears her name.
Not only because she was there at the beginning.
But because our identities as Haitians—and as free Black people in the Americas—can be traced back to her courage, her ceremony, her call. And lastly, because we often live in erasure and we should reclaim that.
This is Iman’s House.
And everything starts here.