The name of the magazine derives from the 1938 book "The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution" by C. L. R. James in which James ascribes the Haitian revolutionists a greater purity in regards to their attachment to the ideals of the French Revolution than the French Jacobins. The conservative religious journal "First Things" criticized "Jacobin"'s claim to represent Toussaint Louverture, pointing to Louverture's devout Catholicism, opposition to the massacres of former slave owners, and his actions to the former slaves of the colonies.