Jean Price Mars made history: he was the youngest diplomat in the world
Jean Price Mars was born in October 15th, 1876 at Grande Rivière - du- Nord, Haiti. He was a physician, diplomat, scholar, doctor and anthropologist. Jean Price Mars became diplomat at the age of 20, he worked hard on the development of the Haitian culture. As a writer he wrote many books and essays intended to " restore the dignity of folklore of the Haitian people". "Ainsi parla l'oncle", "La République d'Haïi et la République Dominicaine" where he describes the relation between the two countries of Hispagnola are some of the books he wrote. Jean Price Mars was "Chargé d'Affaires" in Washigton D.C from 1908 to 1911; National Inspector of Public Education from 1912 to 1915, right after that he became Minister to France from 1915 to 1916. Scholars have identified him as the Francophone counterpart of W.E.B. Du Bois for his activism, scholarly rigor, leadership efficiency and his efforts in the rehabilitation of the black race.
Jean Price Mars writings started the "Negritude movement" in Haiti, encouraging people to embrace their African roots. He was the first prominent defender of "Vodoo" as religion. He contributed to the disciplines of religion, religious pluralism, cultural studies, and his promotion of religious tolerance . The biographer Jacques Carmeleau Antoine states that “though he sought and obtained permission to attend Baptist services, he spent more time roaming about the city than in Church.” His attitude toward religion was cold and was caught in “the throes of an inner conflict.” His own religious ideal was: “something special, neither Catholic nor Protestant, but a Christianism that recognized truth in all religious without specifying any particular form of worship.”
Jean Price Mars is known as pioneer of the cultural nationalism and an anti-imperial movement against the brutal American military forces in Haiti.
Price-Mars’s philosophy of religion and reflections on the nature of belief might be summarized in his clarion call for an inclusive tolerance of all faiths and a liberal standpoint on ethics. This is unmistakable in his reasoning in the closing paragraph below: In fact, if we were less willing to consider ‘our morality as the morality,’ we should see that primitive societies are restrained by a very narrow code of constraints and obligations, all of a religious origin which, by their extensive application, dominate the private and public life and express in the clearest fashion that these societies have morality.
Jean Price Mars was a hero, he was seeking the truth about his roots and also an activist.
Source:The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, Jean Price Mars book titled " So Spoke the Uncle", Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, IBID
