When Haiti Is Misunderstood: The Diaspora Responds With History, Dignity, and Memory

Public commentary about Haiti and Haitians too often suffers from a dangerous absence: historical memory.
When Haiti is discussed in certain American media spaces, the conversation is frequently reduced to crisis, migration, poverty, instability, or stereotypes. Rarely is Haiti presented through the fullness of its historical contribution, its revolutionary meaning, its intellectual legacy, or the dignity of its people at home and abroad.
An open letter written by Marc-Arthur Mercidieu and addressed to Megyn Kelly forcefully challenges that pattern. The letter does not merely defend Haitian immigrants. It demands that any public figure speaking about Haiti first confront the history that connects Haiti and the United States.
The tone is direct. The message is unapologetic. The central argument is clear: Haitians are not strangers to American history. Haitians have contributed to the building, defense, labor, culture, and moral life of the United States long before modern immigration debates turned them into political targets.

A Response Rooted in History
The letter begins by reminding readers that Haitian soldiers, known as the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, fought during the Siege of Savannah in 1779. That historical reference is not incidental. It places Haitians within the story of American freedom itself, not as outsiders, but as participants in a struggle that helped shape the early United States.
The point is powerful: before Haiti became an independent nation, men from Saint-Domingue had already shed blood on American soil.
The letter then invokes Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, widely recognized as the founder of Chicago and a man of Haitian origin. His legacy challenges the idea that Haitians arrived in the United States merely as recipients of opportunity. In one of America’s most important cities, a Haitian hand helped lay the foundation.
The letter also highlights Pierre Toussaint, the Haitian-born philanthropist whose generosity, faith, and service left a lasting mark on New York. Toussaint’s life complicates narrow narratives about Haitian identity. He was not a burden to society. He was a builder of conscience, compassion, and civic responsibility.
Taken together, these examples form the moral architecture of the letter: Haitians have not only lived in America; they have helped shape America.

The Haitian Diaspora and the Burden of Misrepresentation
The letter also speaks for the Haitian diaspora living in the United States today. It insists that Haitians work, pay taxes, raise families, build communities, and contribute to the economy with dignity.
This is an important corrective.
Immigrant communities are often judged by isolated incidents, political narratives, or sensational headlines. The Haitian community has been especially vulnerable to this kind of public distortion. Yet the reality of Haitian life in America is far richer and more complex.
Haitians serve in hospitals, schools, transportation, churches, businesses, construction, caregiving, public service, and countless sectors of American life. They are not simply present. They are contributing.
The letter’s reference to Springfield, Ohio, speaks directly to this point. It argues that Haitian immigrants there did not arrive to take, but to rebuild. Whether in Ohio, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or elsewhere, Haitian communities often bring labor, faith, discipline, family values, and a deep desire to belong without erasing who they are.

The Question of Belonging
One of the strongest parts of the letter is its challenge to the politics of belonging.
The writer asks a difficult question: who gets to decide who belongs in America?
For descendants of immigrants, settlers, and displaced populations, this question carries moral weight. America itself is a nation built through migration, displacement, conquest, labor, and reinvention. To speak of belonging while ignoring that history is to speak selectively.
The letter pushes back against the arrogance of those who treat Haitian immigrants as permanent outsiders while benefiting from a country shaped by immigrants, enslaved people, Indigenous dispossession, and global labor.
This does not mean that immigration cannot be discussed seriously. It can and should be. But serious discussion requires honesty, historical humility, and respect for human dignity.

Haiti’s Condition Cannot Be Separated From Foreign Intervention
The letter also turns toward Haiti’s condition today. It rejects the idea that Haiti’s struggles are simply the result of Haitian incapacity.
This is perhaps the most politically charged section of the letter, but also one of the most important. Haiti’s poverty, instability, and institutional weakness cannot be understood without considering the long history of external pressure, debt, occupation, economic control, political interference, and international neglect.
The letter points specifically to the 1914 removal of Haiti’s gold reserves by U.S. Marines and the broader history of U.S. intervention in Haiti. These are not minor historical details. They are part of the financial and political weakening of a sovereign nation.
To discuss Haitian migration without discussing why Haitians are forced to migrate is intellectually dishonest.
People do not abandon their homeland lightly. Haitians love Haiti. Many dream of returning. But returning requires safety, opportunity, stability, and the end of systems that continue to feed insecurity.

A Demand for Respect, Not Pity
The letter’s closing is not a request for sympathy. It is a demand for respect.
That distinction matters.
Haiti does not need to be reduced to misery in order to deserve dignity. Haitians do not need pity in order to be treated fairly. The Haitian people carry a revolutionary history, a deep culture, a resilient identity, and a pride that has survived humiliation, occupation, disaster, and betrayal.
The first Black republic in the world does not need to be spoken about as though it has no history.
The letter is therefore more than a response to one media personality. It is a broader indictment of how Haiti is often framed in public discourse. It is a reminder that words carry consequences, especially when spoken by people with large platforms.

Why This Letter Matters
This open letter matters because it refuses silence.
It refuses the shrinking of Haitian identity into caricature.
It refuses historical amnesia.
It refuses the humiliation of a people who have already endured too much.
It refuses the idea that Haitians must constantly justify their humanity.
In a time when public speech can quickly inflame prejudice, letters like this serve an important function. They restore context. They defend memory. They remind the world that no people should be discussed without reference to their history, their contributions, and their dignity.
Haiti is not only a crisis.
Haiti is a civilization of resistance.
A nation of memory.
A people of contribution.
A diaspora of labor, faith, sacrifice, and pride.
Before anyone speaks carelessly about Haiti, they should first learn what Haiti has already given to the world.

Attachment: Open Letter to Megyn Kelly by Marc-Arthur Mercidieu
Ms. Kelly,
Before you open your mouth about Haiti and Haitians, perhaps you should open a history book.
Let us remind you of a few things your education apparently skipped.
Haitian soldiers, the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, fought and bled on American soil at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, helping secure Georgia for a nation that hadn’t even fully become one yet. Over 500 Black Haitian men fought for your freedom before Haiti had its own. You’re welcome.
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a man of Haitian origin, built the settlement that became Chicago, the third largest city in the United States. Every skyscraper downtown stands on a foundation a Haitian man laid. Remember that.
Pierre Toussaint, a Haitian-born man who arrived in New York as an enslaved person, became one of the most generous philanthropists in the city’s early history. He financed the construction of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.
He funded orphanages. He housed the homeless.
He cared for the sick during yellow fever epidemics when others fled. The Catholic Church has opened his cause for sainthood, because even Rome recognized what America refuses to acknowledge.
A Haitian man helped build the spiritual and social foundation of New York City.
His remains rest beneath that very cathedral today.
Du Sable built Chicago. Pierre Toussaint built New York’s conscience. Haitian soldiers defended Georgia. That is three pillars of American civilization touched by Haitian hands, before Haiti ever asked America for a single thing.
The Haitians living in the United States today work. They pay taxes. They contribute to this economy with their hands, their minds, and their dignity, often receiving contempt in return.
Look at Springfield, Ohio. The Haitian community there did not arrive to take. They arrived to rebuild. They are among the most courageous individuals in that state, people who saw a struggling city and chose to invest their labor, their families, and their futures into resurrecting it.

Springfield breathes today in part because Haitians chose to call it home. They are the sons and daughters of Ohio, as much as anyone born there. One incident, one isolated moment, does not define an entire people. You do not judge all of America by its worst days. Do not dare judge Haiti’s children by theirs.
Now, since you want to talk about where people come from, let’s talk.
Why did your family leave Europe?
Did you or your ancestors adopt the culture of the Native Americans whose land you now call home? Or did you simply take it?
The audacity of descendants of settlers lecturing anyone about belonging is breathtaking.
And if Haiti is in the condition it is today, let’s be honest about why. In 1914, United States Marines marched into Port-au-Prince and removed the gold reserves from Haiti’s national bank, stealing the financial foundation of a sovereign nation.
Your government then forced Haiti’s congress to accept a constitution that handed control of its land and resources to foreign interests. Since that moment, Haiti has been bled, systematically, deliberately, repeatedly.
Every time Haiti has tried to stand, a hand from Washington has pushed it back down, through puppet governments, embargoes, occupations, and today, through the deliberate arming of gangs that terrorize the population and manufacture the very chaos used to justify further interference.
Haiti is not poor because Haitians are incapable. Haiti is poor because it has been kept poor, by design.
So yes. Many of us will go home. We love Haiti. We have never stopped. But before you speak about our return, speak to your government about leaving us alone.
Stop sending weapons!
Stop engineering instability!
Stop sending “aid” that poisons, exploits, and creates dependency!
And keep your predators away from our children.
Haiti has suffered enough from those who arrived claiming to help.
We do not need your charity. We do not need your pity. We do not need your commentary.
We have a culture thousands of years in the making. We have a revolution that shook the entire world. We have a pride that no amount of degradation has ever managed to extinguish.
The first Black nation to free itself from slavery doesn’t need a lecture from you.
With clarity and without apology,
The Haitian Diaspora