50 Years of Haitian Migration to South Florida – NBC 6 South Florida

They arrived 50 years in the past, fleeing dictatorship and demise. Along the treacherous, three-week ocean journey, the seafaring Haitian asylum seekers traded their footwear for meals and water in Cuba, and had been briefly jailed within the Bahamas earlier than being requested their last vacation spot.

“Miami,” all of them stated.

When their leaking, 56-foot picket sailboat lastly made landfall 40 miles north of Miami in Pompano Beach on Dec. 12, 1972, there was no household or Haitian group to welcome them, or protesters lining the shorelines demanding their freedom.

“They arrested us, put us in jail,” recalled Marie Bernard, who was among the many 65 passengers, together with two youngsters, aboard the Saint Sauveur, the primary documented boat of Haitian refugees to arrive in South Florida.

“They said there were others who would be coming behind us and they didn’t want them to ask why they were detained and we were not,” she stated. “So we accepted to be jailed.”

Bernard left Haiti on Nov. 23, 1972, after her first husband, a military officer, was killed by the Duvalier regime. Fear of an analogous destiny led her to board a stolen picket boat and set sail for Florida.

Ultimately the Haitian migrants banded along with a bunch of Black Baptist ministers, Catholic clergymen and Haitian exiles in New York and commenced difficult U.S. immigration and detention insurance policies. In the method, in addition they gave beginning to a brand new South Florida group of largely Black, Creole-speaking refugees with French-sounding surnames.

When the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service denied Bernard’s declare for political asylum, she grew to become a plaintiff within the first problem by Haitian “boat people” of U.S. authorities coverage.

Then often known as Marie Jean Pierre, she and 215 different Haitians who had fled to the U.S. on boats between 1972 and 1973 sued the U.S. authorities in federal courtroom. The class-action lawsuit, Pierre v. U.S., was led by famend civil rights and immigration legal professional Ira Gollobin. Though the group’s declare of racial bias and unequal remedy of Haitian migrants wasn’t profitable, it set the tone for what was to come.

In 1980, after 5,000 Haitian boat folks had been denied political asylum, one discrimination case — Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti — claiming that the U.S. authorities practiced “blatant racism,” was profitable. In addition, strain on the U.S. by the Washington, D.C.-based Haitian Refugee Project’s Fritz Longchamp, who later grew to become a international minister of Haiti, and Michael Posner, who later grew to become an assistant secretary of state, led the Carter administration to set up the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Act of 1980.

“Those of us, old-timers, we worked hard in the community. They called us crazy because we were protesting everywhere in the streets,” stated Bernard, who was ready to modify her immigration standing beneath the brand new legislation and turn into a authorized everlasting resident, which allowed her to reunite with the 2 youngsters she had left behind in Haiti.

Other immigrants who had been ready to receive everlasting authorized standing “would say, ‘Where did those Haitians, who have come to dirty the image of people here, come from?’ But we held our heads high, even up until now,” Bernard stated. “We respected the law, we lived our lives. I am going to have 50 years here in this country, and I have never had a problem.”

It wouldn’t have been potential, she stated, had it not been for the authorized challenges, the protests and people early champions of Haitian rights, just like the Rev. Jacques Mompremier — whose Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Miami served as a short lived house for her and the opposite first refugees — and the Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest.

At 79, Bernard has lived to welcome three generations of household. Her 5 youngsters have turn into owners, medical professionals and U.S. Army and Air Force veterans, in addition to dad and mom and grandparents.

That pioneering legacy, together with so many different moments each triumphant and unhappy, is being commemorated in what South Florida’s Haitian group is asking the “December 12 Project: The day we became boat people.”

“They represent all that is strong and resilient in our culture,” stated Sandy Dorsainvil, who helps to arrange a gathering at 6 p.m. Monday on the Little Haiti Cultural Center, 212 NE 59th Terr. “Their victory over the cold sea shows our children every day that they can do anything.”

The year-long commemoration will hint the Haitian-American group’s rise in South Florida by means of reflections, storytelling, music, poetry, panel discussions and different actions.

HAITIANS STILL TAKING TO THE SEA IN DEADLY VOYAGES

“Those who have been allowed to stay in the U.S. have made tremendous strides during the past 50 years,” stated Marleine Bastien, a Haitian group and immigration activist who final month grew to become the second Haitian American and first lady of Haitian descent elected to the Miami-Dade County Commission.

Bastien stated the journey of the primary Haitian refugees and the authorized battles they waged to keep within the United States, whereas worthy of celebration, are additionally reminders of how little has modified. Five many years later, Haitians are nonetheless taking to the ocean in lethal voyages, solely to be detained and deported again.

Instead of fleeing dictatorship, they’re being pushed by social upheaval, gang violence, kidnappings and political turmoil, all made worse by final 12 months’s assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

“President Biden has deported 24,000 people at a time when Haiti is reeling under the worst political conditions in its recent history,” Bastien stated. “People are principally refugees in their very own homeland. They can not reside in their very own houses; ladies have to defend their little women in order that they don’t seem to be gang raped, women as younger as 5 years previous.

“This is a country at war,” she added. “This bleak, sad history clearly tells us that U.S. policy toward Haiti must change; we must address the root causes of this risky, oftentimes deadly migration to create safe conditions for Haitians to stay home.”

Gepsie Metellus, the chief director of Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center, a group group in North Miami, stated she hopes the Haitian group’s story in South Florida can encourage change again house. At the very least, she stated, she hopes that the sharing of tales will encourage youthful generations of Haitian Americans.

“We are a relatively strong Haitian-American community, in spite of everything,” Metellus stated. “The story for me is of our triumphant spirit.”

That triumph might be seen within the quantity of Haitian Americans who at the moment maintain elected places of work, function the heads of personal {and professional} organizations, and have made a reputation for themselves within the fields of training and drugs.

But the going was troublesome for these first arrivals. While the primary group was welcomed by Black pastors and different spiritual leaders, the following waves acquired a lukewarm reception, labeled “boat people” and encountering a U.S. immigration system bent on sending them again.

As their numbers continued to rise, their presence fueled racial and ethnic tensions. Then within the early Eighties, on the peak of the AIDS epidemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized Haitians as being among the many 4 danger teams for the brand new illness. In March 1983, the CDC stated the best quantity of AIDS instances had been amongst homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroine customers and Haitians. They grew to become often known as the “Four-H Club.”

“In spite of that, you see a sense of soldiering on, you see people working to ensure that they are perceived as human beings, human beings who are worthy of safety, worthy of being valued, worthy of dignity,” Metellus stated.

Among their achievements in Miami-Dade County: the election of the primary Haitian American, Philippe Derose, to public workplace in 1993 when he grew to become a councilman within the Village of El Portal, and the primary mayor within the U.S. in 2000 when he headed the village. A 12 months later, Haitians made historical past once more after they elected Josaphat “Joe” Celestin because the mayor of North Miami, the primary Haitian American to turn into mayor of a large U.S. metropolis. That identical 12 months, Fred Seraphin grew to become the primary Haitian-American choose in Miami-Dade County.

With a number of Haitians elected to the Florida (*50*), the group would make historical past once more in 2010, when Jean Monestime, who arrived in Miami by boat in 1981 from Haiti, grew to become the primary Haitian American to serve on the Miami-Dade County Commission. Twelve years after his election, Monestime, who was time period restricted, has been changed by Bastien.

A grassroots activist who as soon as labored on the Haitian Refugee Center beneath the supervision of legal professional Steve Forester — one of the group’s consummate immigration advocates — Bastien arrived right here within the early Eighties from Haiti, herself fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship.

“Haitians contribute greatly to build the social, political and economic fabrics of their adopted country,” she stated. “Given the same opportunities under the right conditions, they can do the same in their homeland.”

THE BEGINNING OF U.S. IMMIGRATION DETENTION POLICY

Abel Jean Simon Zephir was 16 when he left Haiti on Aug. 15, 1973, and landed in South Florida with 61 different Haitian refugees. Zephir knew some of the passengers who had arrived with Bernard on the primary boat, and thought his entry into the U.S. would find yourself being a lot the identical: a short detention then launch.

Instead, he spent 9 months in detention, the start of U.S. immigration detention coverage because it exists at this time.

“Even though some of us told immigration very clearly why we left Haiti, because of political persecution, it didn’t matter,” he stated. “Their goal was to throw us in jail.”

Zephir’s boat was the third one to arrive in South Florida loaded with Haitian refugees, and the surroundings was beginning to change for asylum-seeking Haitians. During his imprisonment, he and his fellow refugees had been transferred from Florida to Texas.

Then, within the spring of 1974, a younger Haitian named Turenne Deville was denied asylum and killed himself inside a Miami jail slightly than face being despatched again to Haiti.

Zephir stated they realized the news from the director of the Texas facility, who gathered him and all of the opposite Haitians and stated, “Bad news… One of you died last night.”

“Turenne Deville killed himself,” Zephir stated, breaking down as he recalled the director’s phrases and try at consoling them. “That’s the only time I felt that the detention officer was a human being.”

Zephir and his fellow Haitians had been lastly launched, the outcome of the activism and authorized motion by Mompremier and his Haitian Refugee Center, which was then backed by the National Council of Churches. “They put us on a bus,” he stated. “I arrived Saturday midday in Miami at the Haitian Refugee Center.”

Deville’s demise grew to become a turning level within the motion, Zephir stated.

“You had a solid Haitian community in New York… you had a lot of Haitian students at Columbia University, you had a community of exiles,” he stated. “They felt that (Deville’s death) was not acceptable because they themselves were victims of Duvalier’s regime,” Zephir stated.

The Haitians in New York determined that the Haitians in Miami “needed our help,” Zephir stated, and between 1973 and 1979, Miami’s Haitian group started getting reinforcements from up north.

DEMONSTRATIONS, LEGAL ACTION AND A MAVERICK PRIEST

Among these supporting the trigger was Viter Juste, who rallied Haitians to protest a Miami-Dade School Board coverage prohibiting youngsters of undocumented Haitians from enrolling in class; Rulx Jean-Bart, a onetime scholar organizer at York College who grew to become director of the Haitian Refugee Center, and the late Bernard Fils-Aimé. A former scholar organizer at Columbia University, Fils-Aimé, who died in Miami in 2020 from COVID-19 associated sickness, grew to become one of the motion’s high strategists and go-to advisers.

The northern transplants additionally embrace Jean-Juste, the maverick Catholic priest who died in 2009. Known as Father Gerry, Jean-Juste was a priest in Boston who had visited Miami for 2 weeks in December 1977 earlier than transferring right here completely in 1978.

A controversial determine who as soon as picketed the Miami archdiocese and known as the archbishop a racist, Jean-Juste was an agitator and Haitian crusader whose presence introduced prominence to the Haitian Refugee Center and the Haitian rights motion, as he demanded the discharge of these detained. His grassroots group, Veye-Yo, may rally Haitians out into the streets at a second’s discover.

“If it wasn’t for Jean-Juste and his charisma, and ability to organize people, I don’t think that there would be a Haitian community here. It was a combination of a coordinated, legal and political effort, just like what Martin Luther King did,” stated legal professional Ira Kurzban, who joined the Haitian Refugee Center within the late Nineteen Seventies as a younger lawyer. “Those who say Jean-Juste is the Martin Luther King of the Haitian community, it’s true.”

One of the United States’ foremost immigration legal professionals, Kurzban was recruited to work with the Haitian Refugee Center by Gollobin, the Newark-born immigration legal professional who, as well as to litigating Bernard’s class motion federal lawsuit, litigated different Haitian instances difficult U.S. immigration legislation.

“When those boats first started to come, the Saint Sauveur, they actually treated the people similar to the way they treated Cubans. It was kind of an open arms policy; they let people in,” Kurzban stated. “But as extra boats began to come the federal government realized that they didn’t have a mechanism to deal with folks in any sort of coordinated and legalistic means.

“The whole forces of the federal government in 1977 and 1978 were against Haitians coming here,” he added. “They were doing everything they could. They put people in removal proceedings, they expedited removal proceedings.”

Bernard, who’s saddened by her homeland’s ongoing troubles and the truth that Haitian migrants are nonetheless being turned away from the U.S., stated Jean-Juste doesn’t get sufficient credit score.

“Every day Haitians should raise their hands to the heavens, and light a candle for him and say a prayer for him,” she stated.

Zephir, 65, who additionally credit these early leaders, additionally pays homage to the Black civil rights motion.

(*6*) he stated, including, “we have to continue to fight.”