Francois Duvalier was one of the few men to be elected. He rallied the black majority to overcome the powerful mulatto elite who had held power for years. After the election, Duvalier, or Papa Doc as he came to be known, replaced the mulatto army generals, civilian administrators and clerics with people from his black supporters.
Duvalier did not trust the army which had often seized power so he formed a militia commonly known as the Tonton Macoute, meaning boogey man in the Haitian Creole language, In April of 1963, Clemont Barbot, the head of the Tonton Macoute, hatched a plan to overthrow the President but Papa Doc threatened a blood bath and mountain of bodies if anyone supported Barbot. The United States government recommended all US citizens leave Haiti until the situation was resolved.
I arrived in Haiti in July of that year. Tensions still ran high but Church World Service staff and missionaries of various denominations thought Papa Doc had things under control. Although Barbot was still at large he had few supporters. Rumors had it that Barbot had not been caught because he had changed himself into a black dog so the army and militia shot every black dog they saw. Finally Barbot was caught and his corpse spent a week tied to a chair and sitting in a park near the presidential palace as warning to black dogs and potential rebels.