After the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, Judith Francois didn’t know if her brother or her grandmother were alive for five days.
“It was devastating,” the Rogers Park resident said. “Everyone was just scared.”A relative eventually told Francois her family was safe. They were physically fine, but after her brother’s school collapsed, they slept outside to avoid getting trapped during an aftershock.
Fortunately, Francois, 24, had family here for emotional support. Her parents own Sweet Nick’s Caribbean, 741 Howard St., a small Haitian eatery filled with the faint odor of fried pastries and black bean rice.
She and her family members are part of the estimated 5,000 Haitians who live on the North Side, a population that started receiving national attention due to their fundraising efforts after the disaster.
Evanston Ald. Lionel Jean-Baptiste (2nd), a Haitian immigrant and chairman of Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti, contributed to the relief effort and even traveled to Haiti earlier this month. Haitian Congress, a local nonprofit that works to strengthen and develop Haiti, has been collecting donations since the day after the earthquake. They initially concentrated on food and medical supplies but are now focusing on partnering with companies that manufacture prosthetic limbs for the large number of amputees.
“Logistically, Haiti was never fit for amputees,” said Aline Lauture, executive director of the organization. “If you have young people who are double-amputees, they need to function.”The recent tragedy only emphasized a trait the Evanston Haitian community has had for decades: supporting one another.
As the community grew in the 1970s and the 1980s, Haitian churches sprouted, cultural events formed and, as Lauture said, the Haitian community became “an extended family.””Growing up in Evanston was great because Evanston is one of the first suburbs in this area that was open to having a diverse population,” Lauture said.
Lauture immigrated in 1973 when she was just a teenager. She moved straight to Evanston to be with her parents and three sisters who had come to the United States earlier “seeking better opportunities,” she said.
Lauture and two of her sisters still call Evanston home, and they are now joined by children and grandchildren. With events organized by Haitian Congress, they celebrate Haitian Independence Day in January and Bois Caiman, a holiday that marks the beginning of a successful slave rebellion in Haiti, in August. Such events preserve the community’s strong history in this area. The first non-Indian to settle in Chicago was a Haitian fur trader named Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, who made camp where the Michigan Avenue Bridge is today.
For Francois, who emigrated from Haiti when she was 11 years old, the best part of Haitian culture is the food. On Independence Day, her family and friends cook a traditional pumpkin soup and deliver it to each others’ houses to celebrate their home country.
“They eat yours, and you eat theirs,” she said. “It’s a nice thing.”
But not everything in Evanston is easy for Haitian immigrants, said Erno Dupiton, a board member for the First Evangelical Haitian Church. He came to the city in 1983 to visit a cousin and hasn’t left since.
“Unfortunately, the resources for Haitians to get together are very limited,” Dupiton said. “We do not have a community center in Evanston.”
Despite occasional instances of racial profiling, Dupiton said he loves living here.
“We support each other, and we don’t need that much to be happy,” he said. “Combining all those factors together and when you get to the U.S. it’s like kids in a candy store.”[email protected]
