Haitian Flag Day

Haitian Cultural Awareness Week promotes pride, consciousness

By Jane Charles-Voltaire

These final days of May signal the end of the Haitian Cultural Awareness Week activities in New York City.

Throughout the month, various Haitian community leaders and groups came together to promote Haitian heritage with a particular focus on encouraging consciousness among Haitian youth living in the diaspora.

One group playing a major role in the month's activities has been the 18mai Committee (www.18maicommittee.com/HCAW.html), a non-profit organization founded in 1995 and based out of Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College. The 18mai Committee is in charge of not only organizing the Haitian Flag Day activities and parade, they have also launched educational initiatives to promote Haitian heritage and history in public schools with large Haitian student bodies throughout the city.

In a recent interview, Rudell Duceus, president of the 18mai Committee, spoke of the importance of encouraging young people in the Haitian diaspora to "embrace their culture and their country's legacy." He added that through educational programs, such as the "Toussaint Louverture Leadership Program" which provides both academic and educational support for the large contingent of Haitian and West African students attending schools such as the Clara Barton School, Middle School 61 and P.S. 221, as well as offering a literacy program for the student's families. However, Duceus noted that in fact the eventual goal of the program would be to reach out to all students and to implement a curriculum "where all kids can learn about Haitian history."

Gina Cheron is an active member of the Haitian community and participated in many of month's activities. She is also the coordinator of the Consortium for Haitian Empowerment, an umbrella organization which supports various member groups, such as the 18mai Committee, by creating dialogue among outreach groups that promote social justice and serve New York's Haitian-American community.

When asked to reflect on the month's larger impact within the community, Cheron noted that the focus for this year's Haitian Flag Day was to promote "flag day as not only a cause for celebration and partying, but also as an occasion to tell youngsters about where they were coming from, what the founders of our nation had done, the importance of the war of independence, an independence which required much sacrifice and bloodshed."

In fact, this year marked the 205th Anniversary of the creation of the Haitian Flag. Haitian Flag Day is a nationally recognized holiday in Haiti with origins stemming from the creation and flying of the first Haitian flag on May 18, 1803 under the leadership of the General Toussaint Louverture, national hero and liberator of the Haitian people. The observance of flag day for Haitians living on the mainland as well as those living in the U.S. honors the legacy of this small Caribbean nation's unique and precarious history of independence, as a result of having accomplished the first successful slave revolt in the world and becoming the first Black nation in the Americas. In culminating its independence from France, the leaders of the Haitian Revolution consecrated their newly erected flag with the prevailing words "L'union fait la force" signifying, in unity there is strength.

With thousands of people participating in this year's Haitian Cultural Awareness Week, community leaders involved in the organizing of events took the opportunity, as Cheron notes, to "perpetuate the sense of unity that gave us our freedom." When asked about what kind of an impact his organization had in Haiti, Duceus responded, "the stronger we are here, the stronger we can be in Haiti.

"We support folks back there. This is where the bread and butter is."

As organizations, like 18mai Committee continue to support New York's Haitian-American community through educational programs, as well as through entrepreneurial initiatives, such as The Haitian Women's Foundation (created in 2002 as a means of building financial support for women going to college and starting their own business) we continue to make progress in uplifting ourselves from the bitter and often dire conditions facing Haitian immigrants in New York City as well as their compatriots back home. All of which is a seemingly harsh reminder of the price that the Haitian people have paid for their freedom.