Francois Duvalier

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to an immigrant family from Martinique, Francois Duvalier had always wanted to be a doctor, and after graduation he earned a medical degree and served as a doctor in many rural areas of Haiti, where he gained a reputation for showing the rural poor how to fight typhus and other fatal diseases. In 1946 he was appointed director general of the National Health Service, and four years later was made Minister of Health and Minister of Labor. In 1949 the government was overthrown by a military coup led by Gen. Paul Magloire. Duvalier was a vocal opponent of the coup, resulting in his being forced to go into hiding until 1956, when an amnesty was declared. Duvalier ran for president in the general election of 1957, and in a portent of things to come, he used armed gangs, paid assassins, racial hatreds , succeeded him.