Jean Jonassaint, professor of French and Francophone Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, has established an endowment at Stanford Libraries in honor of anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain. Acknowledged as Haiti’s first Black female anthropologist, Comhaire-Sylvain (1898-1975) is known for her work with the Creole language.

Jonassaint, a native of Haiti, is a leading expert on French-Caribbean culture and literature. His commentary about the political and cultural landscape in Haiti has appeared in major publications including The New York Times, The Toronto Star and others. He notes that as a Haitian and a scholar, he established this endowment to preserve Comhaire-Sylvain’s legacy and allow fellow Haitians to draw inspiration from her life as an educator and activist.

The Sylvain-Jonassaint Fund will seek to acquire unpublished materials to complement Stanford University’s collection of manuscripts, letters, notebooks, photographs and other documents relating to Comhaire-Sylvain’s research. According to Jonassaint, preserving stories of Haiti’s past is crucial because so much of that country’s history gets lost due to limited documentation, archival conservation and access to research funding.

Jonassaint said in a Q&A article published by Stanford: “Generally in Haitian families, most documentation on ancestors and even parents is widely missing; so, having an institution like Stanford Libraries to secure those documents related to the Sylvain family for future generations is invaluable.”