16587: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Ex-New Orleans mayor gears up for voyage (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Sat, Aug. 30, 2003

Ex-New Orleans mayor gears up for voyage of Haitian history
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@herald.com

When organizers of an upcoming sea voyage celebrating Haiti's 200th
anniversary asked Marc Morial to chair the project, they didn't know how
much personal significance it would have for one of America's best known
urban politicians.

For Morial, former New Orleans mayor and newly appointed president of the
National Urban League, becoming honorary chairman of Cruising into History
means more than being part of a milestone celebration.

''We are old Haitian refugees,'' said Morial, 45, whose family traces its
ancestry back to Haiti when it was the French colony of Saint Domingue. That
was before the successful slave revolt led to a new name and a new
distinction in 1804: the first free black republic in the western
hemisphere.

He and his brothers and sisters ''have embraced our Haitian roots with a lot
of enthusiasm and pride,'' Morial said.

New Orleans experienced its own Haitian immigration wave more than 200 years
ago, long before Haitians began arriving in South Florida.

Looking to escape the civil war between Haiti's white planter and mulatto
classes and the ensuing revolution, many Haitians left Port-au-Prince by
boat. Some went to Paris, while others went to Louisiana.

The Morial family was among those who chose to settle in Louisiana, a
territory owned by Spain and France before being sold to the United States
in 1803 for $15 million.

''Those folks were white, mixed and all different skin color,'' Morial said
about the group that came on the boat voyage with his ancestors. He doesn't
know whether his ancestors were free or slaves.

One of Morial's uncles once possessed the family's original transfer
documents from Saint Domingue to New Orleans.

''I've seen it once or twice,'' Morial said in a recent telephone interview
from his New York office, where he's trying to raise the profile of the
93-year-old civil rights organization. ``The community in New Orleans -- the
old free black community -- I would say there is a renewed sense among many
of us that our roots go back to Haiti.''

That awakening comes in part because because 2003 marks another milestone:
the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

That purchase, said both Morial and historian Jon Kukla, author of A
Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America,
would not have occurred if not for the success of the Haitian Revolution.

''Once [Napoleon] was unable to subdue Saint Domingue, there was no point in
having Louisiana,'' Kukla said in a phone interview from Virginia. ``He
decided it wold be better off to sell it.''

Kukla said while New Orleans experienced one of its largest migrations of
Haitians -- between 10,000 and 12,000 -- in 1809 after they were kicked out
of Cuba by the Spaniards, the city had already had an established Haitian
community dating to the early 1790s.

''If you come to New Orleans and you look at the names, all of the old
African-American families have French names and they all live in the area
called the Seventh Ward,'' said Morial. The community remained intact for
more than 100 years, with its members speaking Haitian Creole and observing
Haitian customs, Morial said.

Morial said his grandparents spoke Creole as their first language.

Ron Daniels, the political activist who is organizing the Haitian
bicentennial cruise for Aug. 14-21, 2004, said he knew nothing of Morial's
Haitian heritage when he asked the two-term mayor to spearhead the project.

''It was the icing on the cake,'' said Daniels, who hopes to take about
2,000 people on the seven-day cruise.

Morial, the son of New Orleans' first black mayor Ernest ''Dutch'' Morial,
said he hopes his own history shows that black America is not always what it
seems.

''Black America is not only Americans of African descent but West Indians
and people from Africa,'' he said. ``We as traditional civil rights
organizations will have to work to embrace new people and issues and their
concerns.''

For more information on Cruising into History, go to
www.CruisingIntoHistory.org or call 1-877-HAITI-04.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8: Get 6 months for $9.95/month http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup