Things I was somehow unaware of:

Alexandre Dumas was mixed-race. His grandmother, Marie-Cessette Dumas, was a slave in Haiti. His father, Alex Dumas, was a war hero who was the highest ranking black officer in a Western country until General Colin Powell. (Well, he was tied with Toussaint Louverture, who was the SECOND black man to be general-in-chief of a French Army.) And who, even as a general, would lead extraordinarily dangerous commando raids. Because he was just that badass.

There is evidence that Haitian voodoo includes aspects of commedia del'arte characters in their versions of the Loa.

I'm reading The Black Count by Tom Reiss. I'm only on page 43, and my entire impression of 18th century French Caribbean culture is, well, not OVERTHROWN, but definitely modified. You've got both the incredibly brutal "use 'em up until they die and replace 'em" sugar plantation slavery -- but you've ALSO got a class of well-educated, well-respected, highly cultured free black and mixed-race people.

History is always weirder, cooler, and more interesting than we think.