<\/p>\n
In this Miami Herald file photo, the Rev. Ray Fauntroy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cecilio Ruiz, director of Krome, and the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste tour the Krome detention center.<\/p>\n
Murry Sill<\/p>\n
Miami Herald<\/p>\n
On a humid afternoon in August 1982, the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived at the Krome Detention Center in west Miami-Dade County intent on praying with 200 Haitian refugees who had launched a hunger strike to protest their prolonged detention.<\/p>\n
He never made it past the guard gate.<\/p>\n
Not one to be easily dissuaded, Jackson spotted a nearby restaurant, walked in and asked to use the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vice president had given him his private number and told him to call him anytime he needed him,\u201d Abel Jean-Simon Zephir, who was one of four people with Jackson that day and served as his translator, recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019ve never asked George Bush for anything.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Until then. Jackson placed a collect call to the White House, and after a secretary answered, she handed the phone to George H.W. Bush, vice president to Ronald Reagan. Jackson explained he had traveled to Miami to come raise the spirits of the Haitian detainees following the suicide of a Haitian in a detention facility in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes after he hung up, Jackson was back at Krome. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers were waiting for him. This time, they let him in.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Jesse Jackson during a speech to Haitians on Northwest 54th street in Little Haiti. Al Diaz Miami Herald <\/p>\n
The incident was emblematic for Jackson, the charismatic and relentless advocate who would become one of the most prominent voices in the U.S. in the post-Martin Luther King civil rights era. As he addressed racial injustices and pressed for voting rights for Black people on a national level, he also challenged U.S. immigration policy toward Haitians, equating their prolonged detention and unequal treatment to a moral issue.<\/p>\n
After a long illness, Jackson died at his home on Feb. 17 at the age of 84.<\/p>\n
As his family and Jackson\u2019s Rainbow PUSH Coalition prepare memorial services in Chicago this week, Miami\u2019s Haitian community is also remembering the leader who loudly advocated on their behalf. He saw their plight as not just worthy of a civil rights fight, but one that also demanded the attention of the nation\u2019s highest office and his sustained activism.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a pillar we\u2019ve lost,\u201d said Zephir, 69, who was among the first wave of Haitians to arrive in South Florida by boat<\/a> more than 50 years ago. \u201dThe guy always worked for us. It\u2019s going to be hard to find another.\u201d<\/p>\n Little Haiti visit<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s Aug. 12, 1982, visit began in Little Haiti, where he went to see the Rev. G\u00e9rard Jean-Juste,<\/a> the fiery Catholic priest and co-founder of the Haitian Refugee Center. He learned that Jean-Juste, who had the reputation of an agitator, had been barred from Krome and could not accompany him.<\/p>\n When Zephir later told the priest that Jackson had reached out directly to the vice president of the United States, Jean-Juste laughed in disbelief.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd George Bush accepted the call?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Zephir said.<\/p>\n Jackson had found the refugees to be in \u201cmassive depression,\u201d because of the slow processing of their release and the suicide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt costs $22,000 a year to keep each Haitian locked up in here. Why don\u2019t we put them out in the market and let them be productive?\u201d he said after leaving Krome.<\/p>\n The visit would not be Jackson\u2019s last to South Florida or to Krome. Over the years, he returned repeatedly, on each visit denouncing what he called an immigration system \u201cdriven by a racist policy that\u2019s undemocratic.\u201d Haitians, fleeing a repressive U.S.-supported Duvalier family dictatorship, were branded \u201ceconomic\u201d migrants and detained, while Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro\u2019s communist regime were quickly granted political asylum.<\/p>\n When he launched his historic 1984 presidential runs in 1988, the poor treatment of Haitians figured prominently in his campaigns, though he came under heavy criticism in \u201884 for not including Haiti in a tour of the region, which included visits to Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua. \u201cAs a champion of oppressed people, Jesse Jackson\u2018s Achilles\u2019 heel is Haiti,\u201d a Miami News editorial of the day read, challenging his assertion of avoiding Haiti because of safety concerns.<\/p>\n In 1992, when former California Gov. Jerry Brown launched his second White House bid, Jackson accompanied him on a campaign stop to Miami\u2019s Little Haiti. While happy to hear Brown pledge to give Haitians political asylum if he were to win the presidency, the crowd was equally elated to see Jackson. Crowding Northwest 54th Street, they chanted, \u201cJesse! Jesse!\u201d<\/p>\n Back then, Jackson was at the forefront of the push to restore democracy to Haiti after a military coup in 1991 had deposed the country\u2019s first democratically elected president in modern times and sent him into exile. He accused the administration of President Bush, who years earlier had facilitated his entry into Krome, of having a socially unjust and racist policy toward Haiti.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can restore a royal government in Kuwait,\u201d Jackson said, referring to the U.S. effort that repelled the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, \u201cwe can restore a democratically elected government. Oil is not more precious than democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n From Krome to Guant\u00e1namo<\/p>\n When thousands of Haitians, trying to escape the military junta and killings, took to the high seas only to end up in makeshift camps at the U.S. naval base in Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba, Jackson went there too. He protested their harsh treatment<\/a> and went on a hunger strike with detainees to demand a change in U.S. policy.<\/p>\n \u201cHe asked them to repeat after me, \u2018I am somebody, I am somebody,\u2019\u201d said Tony Jeanthenor, a local activist with Veye Yo, the grassroots Haitian rights group founded by Jean-Juste. \u201cI am a human being, just like everybody else, so don\u2019t mistreat me.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1994 when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide made his triumphant return to Haiti aboard a U.S. government jet accompanied by thousands of American troops and a high-level delegation, Jackson was at his side.<\/p>\n \u201cHe invested a lot of his time to show support for Haitian refugees,\u201d Jeanthenor said. \u201cHe got frustrated seeing how they were treating other refugees. Cubans were given a red carpet treatment. Haitians were being thrown in Krome, and they didn\u2019t know when they were going to get released.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond protests, prayer vigil and his own hunger strike, Jackson leaned on Haitians to become naturalized U.S. citizens so they could vote.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wanted Haitians to become U.S. citizens, to be part of the political system,\u201d Jeanthenor said, crediting Jackson with helping to lay the groundwork for Haitian Americans\u2019 representation in politics. The milestones included a number of firsts, including Haitian Americans elected to the Florida Legislature and the first Haitian-American mayor of a large U.S. city, North Miami\u2019s Josaphat \u201cJoe\u201d Celestin, in 2001.<\/p>\n \u201cAll are part of Jesse\u2019s investments in the Haitian community,\u201d Jeanthenor said.<\/p>\n Haitians current plight<\/p>\n Jackson remain engaged on Haiti issues over the years. After the country\u2019s devastating 2010 earthquake killed more than 300,000 people, he again joined prayer vigils and demanded U.S. support.<\/p>\n Today, as hundreds of thousands of Haitians face the potential once more of mass detention and deportations with the loss of Temporary Protected Status, the civil rights\u2019 leader absence is being felt.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m pretty much sure with the TPS problem we have now, if Jesse was in good health, he would have been in Miami with us,\u201d Zephir said. \u201cHe demonstrated that in the past, without hesitation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rainbow PUSH Coalition has announced that Jackson will lie in state at its Chicago headquarters on Feb. 25 and 26. A public memorial, \u201cThe People\u2019s Celebration\u201d is planned March 6, followed by a service on March 7.<\/p>\n In Miami, longtime activists are planning their own tribute at a North Miami community center named for Jean-Juste who died in 2009. They worry that a younger generation of Haitian-American leaders don\u2019t fully grasp the historic battles that were waged \u2013 the marches to the Miami immigration headquarters building, the lawsuits in the courts and the prayer vigils outside Krome\u2019s gates.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think this generation know what Father Jean Juste, Jesse and others did to put this community together,\u201d Jeanthenor said. \u201cThey sit on a citadel, and they need to cultivate it.\u201d<\/p>\n Zephir agrees. As he reflected on Jackson\u2019s death and the community once more being at an immigration reckoning, he broke into tears. Then he recalled standing beside Jackson outside the gates of Krome, where the minister invoked both sermon and his trademark call for social justice.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would say, over and over, \u2018Let my people go. Let my people go\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ray Fauntroy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Rev. Jean Juste outside the Krome detention center in 1982. Murry Sill Miami Herald <\/p>\n
In this file photo, Jesse Jackson gestures to a crowd of Haitians as he leaves Little Haiti on 54th street where he had just delivered a speech on current affairs in Haiti. Al Diaz Miami Herald <\/p>\n