Chicago was founded by a Haitian.
Chef Daniel Aurel, 26, wants people to know that. There is a large, vibrant mural of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable — the city’s founder — on the outside of his family-owned restaurant Lior’s Cafe in the Washington Heights neighborhood, one of the few restaurants where customers can sit and be waited on in the area.
Haitians have been coming to the city for centuries, Aurel said. His grandfather came to Chicago from Haiti in 1962, and brought his family with him. The restaurant, which opened in May 2023, attracts people from all over the city for Aurel’s famous oxtails, goat pot pie and shrimp stew.
“Haitian food is soul,” he said. “It’s family.”
So when former President Donald Trump brought up the unsubstantiated claim in the presidential debate earlier this month that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing pets to eat, Aurel, like other Haitians in Chicago, called the rhetoric upsetting. But they said they would refuse to let Trump’s continuing unfounded attacks define their values. Haitian culture is deeply rooted and showcased throughout the city.
Chicago’s Haitian community has been stung by Trump’s language, but it has also reminded them of everything they have to be proud of, according to interviews with Haitian leaders, workers and recently arrived immigrants. Although there have not been widespread reports of threats or harassment in Chicago, the community plans to show support for the Haitians in Ohio with a “Stop the Haitian Hate” rally at 2 p.m. Sunday in Federal Plaza.
The character of long-term Haitian immigrants as of those who recently arrived, are far from the narrative that Trump has created, said Cyndee M. Newman of Daughters of Haiti, an organization that provides support to the Haitian diaspora, which has an extensive history in Chicago.
“We are united, we are strong and resilient,” Newman said. “More than ever.”
Haitian legacy
Haiti is the only country in the world that was born out of a slave revolt. But decades of natural disasters, foreign interventions, weakening institutions and lack of engagement from the international community have caused waves of migration from the former French colonized island.
The country is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with more than half of its population living below the World Bank’s poverty line, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
People fleeing Haiti have fanned out across the globe and about 40,000 self-reported Haitians have settled in Chicago, according to data from the General Consulate of Haiti in Chicago. In the past two years, there has been an increase in Haitians arriving in Chicago seeking asylum.
Though some go through Chicago’s shelter system, most arrive directly in Haitian communities or get help from organizations. Most make a pit stop in the city and then reunite with family or friends in other states with larger Haitian communities, according to Aline Lauture, who spearheads efforts to help new arrivals under the Coalition of Haitian American Organizations in the Chicagoland Area.
“They, like us, are here to work,” said Lauture, who has been working to assess the needs of Haitian migrants in city-run shelters.
There are Haitian politicians, business and corporate leaders, professors, nurses and doctors in the city, but it has taken time for Chicago city officials to publicly acknowledge its Haitian legacy, starting from the city’s inception.
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, born in Haiti in 1745, moved to the U.S. when he became a fur trader. He built a cabin on the Chicago River in his late 20s and established a successful trading post — which grew into what is now Chicago.
It took almost 200 years for him to be recognized as the man who founded the city. In 2021, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance renaming the historic Lake Shore Drive to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive. This year, the city passed a resolution designating May as Haitian American Heritage Month.
Jennifer Torres, a volunteer who has worked with Haitian children and adults for the past 14 years, says Haitian contributions in Chicago tend to fly under the radar.
“I wish there was more news about the community’s rich cultural traditions, not just when there are demoralizing comments being made,” Torres said.
Those comments have trickled down to some Haitian Chicagoans. Daphne Francois-Torres, a 37-year-old Haitian American who was born in Chicago, said she recently received a Facebook message from an old colleague saying that he needed Haitian restaurant recommendations, and that he needed to convince his family they weren’t serving cat.
“Some may find that funny,” she said. “But I don’t find that funny at all.”
Francois-Torres said being Haitian is “rooted in everything (she does).” Like Aurel’s grandfather, her parents also came to Chicago from Haiti in the 1960s and ’70s at a young age because they were looking for better educational opportunities for themselves and their children, she said.
Her father became a computer consultant and her mother worked in higher education. Francois-Torres works at the University of Chicago and her sister is a doctor.
The owner of Haitian Food by Maggy, who didn’t want her last name published out of fear she might receive hateful comments, said Trump’s verbal attacks against Haiti left her angry.
“People who say bad things about us don’t have eyes to see,” she said.
Maggy has three kids she raised by herself after her husband passed away 11 years ago. She used to work three cleaning jobs to have enough money for her family, before getting a kitchen spot in the Rockwell Food Center in the Rogers Park neighborhood.
She came to Chicago in 2009, and said she doesn’t know many people in the South Shore neighborhood where she lives because she hardly has time to do anything but work. Still, she loves Chicago. In some ways, she said, the people here and their warmth remind her of her home city Cap-Haïtien.
‘Integral part of the city’
Being Haitian for Courtney Joseph means red beans and rice and marinated pork shoulder — or griot — which makes her salivate at the thought. It means going back to the island to help build schools and provide medical care where people don’t have access. It means large community gatherings where people speak Creole and drink rum and talk politics.
Joseph, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Lake Forest College who is also the daughter of Haitian immigrants and grew up in Chicago, proudly wears her Haitian identity on her sleeve. She said the other Haitian Americans she knows do so, too.
“But that pride, I think, is also a defense mechanism to the amount of vitriol that Haitian people have received,” she said.
Haitians have had to deal with negative propaganda against them for centuries, Joseph said: from false stereotypes of having “pacts with the devil” to kids eating “dirt cookies” to being the arbiters of AIDS in the 1980s. Trump’s comments last Tuesday were just “recycled narratives,” she said.
But in Chicago, Haitians have found many ways to celebrate and honor their shared history.
On a recent Thursday evening, in a small hall in the Bronzeville neighborhood, Chicago native Collin Boltz, 33, danced to the beat of konpa — Haitian music with some jazz elements, African rhythms and Dominican merengue — with his mother-in-law, Marie Dameus, his wife, Esther Boltz, and their toddler.
Other people from the Chicago Haitian community gathered around, eating homemade food from paper plates. Boltz said he didn’t know much about Haiti before he met Esther, who is from Haiti.
“But I learned a lot about it. There are a lot of cool stories,” he said, laughing.
The monthly dance party, called Konpa Swear, is a space for Haitians to embrace and celebrate their roots. They say they feel at home sharing smiles over a drink or two.
“It’s a very special night for all of us because people come together to enjoy the beauty of the culture,” said Carlos Bossard, the director of programming of the Haitian American Museum of Chicago, which hosted the event.
The museum, one of two Haitians museums in the country, was founded in 2012 by Elsie Hector Hernández, a native Haitian. She wanted to help change the negative perceptions and stereotypes about Haiti and Haitian culture with a robust and unique collection of art and artifacts.
Few people know the museum exists in Chicago, but over the last decade it has become an epicenter for the Haitian community, not only in Chicago but across the Midwest, according to Bossard. It has an extensive list of immersive programs throughout the year, including cuisine programming, Haitian dance, music and art. It also features a legal branch, which provides immigration services for Haitian and non-Haitian migrants in Illinois.
Daryll Auguste, member of the Haitian American Lawyers Association and a son of Haitian immigrants, has dedicated some of his time to providing pro bono services for Haitians filing asylum cases. Auguste said he has worked directly with hundreds of recently arrived families, which he described as “diverse in occupation, immersed in culture, especially as God-loving, strong Americans that want to build our community.”
Auguste helped to organize the rally on Sunday, which he considers an important action to ensure that migrants in Chicago feel seen and supported.
“We want to show people that the Haitian community is a beautiful and integral part of the city and of the country,” he said.
Music and connection
Lauren Eldridge Stewart, a professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis, connects with Haitian culture through music, though she isn’t Haitian herself. She said Trump’s comments at the debate ignored U.S. involvement in Haitian migration patterns.
The most dramatic instance was the U.S. occupation of the country between 1915 and 1934, she said. More recently, U.S. tariffs levied on the country have triggered migration.
“All of these foreign involvements do matter,” she said. “And they do a lot to contribute to ongoing instability in the country.”
Stewart spent her summers between 2011 and 2017 offering piano lessons in urban and rural settings throughout Haiti. Classical music, a relic of colonial ties, has been used for years as a form of protest, she said. It acts as a violence prevention measure and aims to bring communities together.
Frederica Confident, 26, took those music classes in Jacmel, Haiti, when she was a teenager. A decade later, Confident was pregnant when she boarded a plane to the U.S., where she knew only a few people, including Stewart.
Confident said she left Haiti because she couldn’t find work, there was no electricity, and food was expensive. Coming to the U.S. was a matter of self-respect, she said. She recalled the flavors of her mother’s soup joumou, an orange-tinted squash soup with beef and vegetables. She remembered the sun, mountains and calm provinces she had left behind.
“Our country has many problems, otherwise we would stay there,” Confident, 26, said in Creole through a translator. “We have a beautiful country. It’s paradise on Earth.”
Confident flew to New York through a program sponsored by President Joe Biden that allows up to 30,000 individuals per month — from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — to come to the U.S. for two years. Her partner still in Haiti hoped to come through the same means. He has never met their daughter, Ivy, born in Chicago three months ago.
Confident said Trump’s comments at the debate made her lose respect for him, as well as any faith that he might ever regard Haitian or Black people as equals.
Thursday afternoon, Confident sat in a quiet courtyard in the Albany Park neighborhood and looked down at her baby in the stroller, swathed in a pink blanket. She said she is grateful to be in Chicago. She went to culinary school in her country and hopes someday to open a restaurant here.
If you’d like to donate to a Haitian organization, consider Concerned Haitian Americans of Illinois, which provides education and clothing to children on the northern coast of Haiti.
