Haitian Diaspora - Particulars

Particulars

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an immigrant from Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), founded the first nonindigenous settlement in what is now Chicago, Illinois, the third largest city in the United States. The State of Illinois and City of Chicago declared du Sable the Founder of Chicago on October 26, 1968.

In January 2010, Canadian Prime Minister Harper announced that Canada will consider fast-tracking immigration to help Haitian earthquake refugees. US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Haitians "not legally in the United States" as of January 12, 2010, would be granted a form of asylum called temporary protected status (TPS). Thousands of Haiti earthquake survivors, including Haitian children left orphaned in the aftermath of earthquake, could be relocated to the US. Senegal is offering parcels of land – even an entire region if they come en masse – to people affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

There is a significant Haitian population in South Florida, specifically the Miami enclave of Little Haiti. New Orleans, Louisiana has many historic ties to Haiti that date back to the Haitian Revolution. New York City, especially in Flatbush, East Flatbush and Springfield Gardens, also has a thriving émigré community with the second largest population of Haitians of any state in the nation. There are also large and active Haitian communities in Boston, Spring Valley (New York), New Jersey, Washington D.C., Providence, Rhode Island, Georgia (USA), Connecticut and Pennsylvania. There are also large Haitian communities in Montreal, Quebec, Paris, France, Havana, Cuba, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Kingston, Jamaica.

Anténor Firmin was a 19th century Haitian anthropologist, perhaps the first black anthropologist and an early writer of négritude, who influenced 20th century American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits.

Michaëlle Jean, the former Governor General of Canada, was a refugee from Haiti who came to Canada in 1968 at age 11.

Haitian immigrants have constituted a very visible segment of American and Canadian society, dating back to before the independence of Haiti from France in 1804. Haiti's proximity to the United States, and its status as a free black republic in the years before the American Civil War, have contributed to this relationship. Many influential early American settlers and black freemen, including Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and W. E. B. du Bois, were of Haitian origin.

In modern times, large-scale emigration from Haiti is mostly because they have been steadily migrating in significant numbers to the United States since the late 1950s—early 1960s, soon after François Duvalier (“Papa Doc”) became the strongman of Haiti. The political repression that characterized Duvalier's regime forced large numbers of Haitians to seek safer harbor in the United States. Sustained political oppression, economic hardship, and lack of opportunity continued to drive contingents of Haitian immigrants out of their homeland all throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (Zéphir 1996, 2001; Catanese 1999).