The affranchis were made up of descendants of white fathers and black mothers, who held a fairly favorable position. They often owned large amounts of land and a few were educated abroad. They had many rights but were denied the rights of holding public office as well as some professions. Some were slave owners and identified more with the whites, while others were artisans, with social aspirations that aligned with the whites, but were sometimes forced to align themselves with the slaves. The slaves were subdivided into those who were house servants and those who were field hands, as well as those who were newcomers and those born on the island.2 After the revolution, most of the white people living in Haiti fled the country or were killed, leaving a small number of mulattos, children of black slaves or black free women and white fathers, and a large group of black freemen and former slaves. With the French gone, the mulattos assumed the role of the French as leaders as well as the European culture left behind. The newly liberated slaves and black affranchis returned to the fields and became small farmers.3 The legacy of the hierarchical social system set up by the French created the new social system that emerged during the post-colonial period. .
For over a century after the revolution the class structure remained basically the same, with the small group of mulatto elites ruling the country and controlling the wealth and the large group of peasants working farms in the countryside, supporting the nation's economy that relied on export crops. During this time there was a small group in between the two classes, however this was not a permanent group, it was a group of transients, moving up or down between the elite and the peasants. It wasn't until recently that a middle class finally emerged, challenging the power of the elites. This class is made up of professionals who are mostly black.