Springfield residents Jacob Payen, left, and Harriett Joseph are working with the city’s Haitian Community Alliance to host a “Celebration of Unity” event on Saturday, Jan. 4. The event is intended to both acknowledge the Jan. 1 Haitian Independence Day holiday and unite the wider Miami Valley to come together to enjoy food, music, dance and history. (Photo by Lauren "Chuck" Shows)
Celebrate unity, Haitian Independence
- Published: January 2, 2025
Just down the road in Springfield, final preparations are being made for a party — and you’re invited.
The Haitian Community Alliance, or HCA, is sponsoring a “Celebration of Unity” event, to be held Saturday, Jan. 4, at the Metropolis of Springfield. The event, which is free and open to all, will feature Haitian food, performances by Haitian singers and dancers and Yellow Springs’ own World House Choir, and panelists who will speak on Haitian history.
“We want everyone out of Yellow Springs to come out and support the event,” Jacob Payen, a Springfield business owner and spokesperson for the HCA, said in a recent interview. “That’s all we’re asking — if they can hear the sound of my voice, I want them to be there.”
The event is being held just after Jan. 1, Haitian Independence Day — a holiday that celebrates Haiti’s liberation from French colonization and rule. Haiti’s successful revolution, led by Black Haitians against their white enslavers, marked the country as the first independent Black republic.
Payen said the “Celebration of Unity” is planned as both a recognition of that holiday and an invitation to the wider Miami Valley to get to know some of the traditions of the area’s growing Haitian community.
“Although we are proud to be independent … we thought unity would be the best celebration,” Payen said. “We decided to do a post-independence event where we can celebrate unity, because we feel like Springfield is divided.”
He referred to the rising tensions in Springfield over the last several years as the number of immigrants from Haiti has grown in the city. Though U.S. Census data doesn’t track where immigrants settle once they’ve entered the country, reports from the Springfield News-Sun have estimated between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield since 2020.
Most have come via Temporary Protected Status, or TPS — an immigration designation that allows people from select countries experiencing political unrest or the effects of natural disasters to emigrate to the U.S. for 18 months, with the option for TPS to be extended indefinitely.
That’s how Harriett Joseph, a professional event planner who has been working to coordinate the “Celebration of Unity,” came to be a resident of Springfield. Initially, she was visiting a friend in 2021 when her brother suggested she file for TPS and stay in Springfield. That was the same year Haiti’s then-president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated — and, as the News-Sun reported, the year Springfield first saw a large influx of immigrants from Haiti.
Joseph said she was initially hesitant to stay in the U.S.; she had already established a successful event-planning business in Haiti and was reluctant to leave it, and her family and friends, behind.
“But my brother said, ‘You better stay — it’s a good opportunity because of how the country is right now, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to come back,’” Joseph said. “And I’m glad I stayed now — I saw a lot of opportunity, and I said, ‘Yeah, maybe I can do what I used to do in my country here, helping my people who need help with decorating and events.’”
Like Joseph, Payen said he saw Springfield as rife with possibility. He and his wife previously lived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where they owned and operated Milokan Botanica, a spiritual goods and natural remedies store. He said he initially came to Springfield to visit a friend.
“I came for a week — that was three years ago,” he said.
He said he noticed “a lot of abandoned houses” around the city — which he said he didn’t view as a blight, but rather as a kind of canvas for rejuvenation.
“We ended up falling in love with Springfield,” Payen said. “I told my wife, ‘Maybe we’re here at the right time, because this city cannot remain isolated like this. Something’s got to be done, and we need to be a part of it.’”
Payen and his wife bought and renovated several crumbling homes, which they now lease as rental properties. They also opened a second location of Milokan Botanica on Limestone Street.
Both Payen and Joseph said they jumped into becoming part of the fabric of Springfield quickly and with both feet; Joseph offered her event-planning services to friends and neighbors for free for about a year in order to build familiarity within the community, and Payen helped form the Haitian Community Alliance in order to help stitch together the growing number of Haitian-run businesses and organizations, most of which are now members of the HCA.
They hope to spread that sense of unity beyond the Haitian community and into the wider city and tri-county area, where Payen said he believed most of his fellow migrants to Springfield felt relatively welcome prior to 2023. That year, however, a Clark County Haitian driver collided with a school bus, injuring 23 students and killing one — an incident Payen said caused “growing tension.” Though the collision involved only one member of Springfield’s Haitian community, he said the community felt a sense of responsibility over the incident.
“We no longer felt welcome, but as a community, we wanted to send a message stating that we are aware of what’s happening, we understand and we are working on it,” Payen said. “After that incident, we took action.”
The HCA soon launched the “Ohio Traffic Show,” hosted by Miguelito Jerome on New Diaspora Live, a Haitian bilingual radio outlet located in CoHatch in downtown Springfield. “Ohio Traffic Live” broadcasts on radio and streaming video twice weekly, and focuses on road safety and driver education. HCA also worked with the office of the Ohio Director of Public Safety, Andy Wilson, to help train Haitian drivers and install driving simulators in Clark County.
Despite those efforts, Springfield’s Haitian community was again met with suspicion — this time on a national level — after invented claims of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating house pets were spread online in 2024. Those baseless claims were repeated by President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, fanning the flame of hostility toward Haitians in Springfield and the wider U.S.
“That hurt us,” Joseph said. “There were kids coming from school saying, ‘Mom, I’m afraid, because somebody said something about the eating cats thing.’ That was hurtful — we just want to be here and work and have something.”
Payen added: “We used to think the rhetoric was just part of a presidential campaign — but after the campaign, we noticed it’s bigger than that, and we think if we can help change … the narrative, it will help the country as a whole, not just the city of Springfield. Now, how do we do that? We have to keep doing what we’re doing — working hard, building relationships, sharing our culture.”
That’s the thinking behind the upcoming “Celebration of Unity” event, which Payen and Joseph said has been aided by local residents Al Schlueter, who volunteers as an English coach for Haitian residents in Springfield, and Catherine Roma, director of the World House Choir. Joseph added that she has been working with the choir, teaching them the Haitian national anthem phonetically in Haitian Creole.
Local Haitian restaurants Rose Goute and Keket Bongou will provide food for the celebration — specifically, soup joumou, a pumpkin soup traditionally eaten on Haitian Independence Day.
According to the November issue of The Alliance magazine, published by the HCA, enslaved Haitians were forbidden to eat soup joumou, a dish reserved only for French colonists and plantation owners. On Jan. 1, 1804, when Haiti declared its independence, “Haitians prepared and shared soup joumou, reclaiming the dish as their own,” The Alliance reads.
“On Jan. 1, we eat soup joumou all day long,” Joseph said.
Payen and Joseph said they hope the “Celebration of Unity” will be attended by a large number of those outside the Haitian community, with whom they hope to share some of their culture. And what better way to do that than to break bread together, and enjoy music and dance?
“That’s the main idea behind the event — but we are hoping to keep sending the message that we are here to get to know each other and share our culture,” Payen said. “This nation was built with the help of immigrants from all over the world. We’re hanging on to that.”
All are invited to attend the “Celebration of Unity” Saturday, Jan. 4, 5–9 p.m., at the Metropolis of Springfield, located at 102 W. High St. Admission is free.
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