Haitian Americans

Haitian Americans are an emergent group among recent immigrants to the United States. Haitians are the second-largest black immigrant group, after Jamaicans, with strong transnational connection to their homeland. An estimated 830,000 self-identified Haitians currently live in the United States, though this number does not include those here illegally, recent immigrants, or the children of Haitian immigrants.

Transcript

• For New York City’s Haitian community it is the unknown that is the worst. Days after the catastrophic earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince, people are still trying to reach their loved ones; those who are alive and those who are dead. Jean-Willie Champagne found out this morning that his mother and brother were crushed to death.
• I’m trying to go to see if I can get a plane to go to Haiti, so I want to go to get my mum.
• Dead phones and unanswered text messages lead people to Chay Pa Lou, a Haitian community center in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood. A trickle of worried relatives drop in hoping to get news from the ground. Fersti Antoine still has not heard from her brother, sister-in-law and two nieces.
• There’s really nothing we can do. Nobody – you can fly down there, you cannot go – you feel like you want to help, but you won’t really help us.
• In a nearby storefront, the Haitian radio station, Radio Pa Nou serves as a remote command center for the rescue mission. Concerned relatives call in to report missing loved ones.
• Yes, they give me an address, phone number, everything, you know, because we have a lot of motorcycles in Haiti. We send people to check the address from the people.
• Joseph Cadez was able to reach Haiti by phone, and found out his mother was safe, but his family there witnessed indescribable horrors.
• They couldn’t even count how many people lost their life, and the neighborhood where they live is very bad. Voiceover: Many locals gathered at Radio Pa Nou say they plan to fly to Haiti once flights begin again, but for now they must sit and wait.

Even before the official establishment of the United States, there was a history between the future super power and its southern Caribbean neighbor. During the American Revolutionary War, a group of free black men from Saint Domingue (not yet Haiti), known as the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, fought on the side on the French against the British in the Siege of Savannah of 1779. Haitians also were a part of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. During the 1940s, an ad was placed in Haitian newspapers recruiting at least 40 Haitian Army pilots to begin training at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.