"The first documented arrival of Haitian refugees in South Florida dates to 1972, when a wooden sailboat, the Saint Sauveur, ran aground off of Pompano Beach, carrying sixty‑five asylum seekers fleeing the ruthless dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Many Haitian families gravitated to Lemon City, one of the oldest settlements in Miami, developed in the late eighteen-hundreds and, at the time, largely populated by lemon-grove workers from the Bahamas."
"Today in Little Haiti, a seven‑foot bronze statue of Toussaint Louverture, one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, stands in a small plaza known as the City of Miami Freedom Garden. The plaza sits across from a gas station and bakery, surrounded by rows of modest homes, some purchased decades ago by newly arrived Haitian immigrants, before gentrification began to reshape the neighborhood."
Haitian refugees first arrived in South Florida in 1972 when the wooden sailboat Saint Sauveur ran aground off Pompano Beach with sixty‑five asylum seekers fleeing Jean‑Claude Duvalier's dictatorship. Many families settled in Lemon City, an old Miami settlement initially inhabited by Bahamian lemon-grove workers, and later established businesses, churches, markets, and cultural centers. Viter Juste coined the neighborhood name Little Haiti in the early 1980s. A seven-foot bronze statue of Toussaint Louverture anchors the City of Miami Freedom Garden, where community gatherings and Haitian Independence Day traditions, including soup joumou, continue amid ongoing gentrification. The planned end to Temporary Protected Status threatens mass returns to a crisis-stricken Haiti.
Read at The New Yorker
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