What’s in a Name? Plenty, When It’s a Street in Brooklyn’s ‘Little Haiti’

NEW YORK — After years of meetings and planning, the City Council announced a ceremonial resolution last week that named a section of Flatbush “Little Haiti.” Members of the city’s Haitian community cheered and waved red and blue flags in the council chambers in celebration.

“We recognize that the Haitian population in these neighborhoods in Brooklyn is an amazing thing,” Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, said.

But for many of those gathered, the ceremony was incomplete. A separate resolution was supposed to co-name Rogers Avenue between Farragut Road and Clarkson Avenue in honor of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who was one of Haiti’s founding fathers.

A fierce military leader who fought alongside Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian revolt against France, Dessalines declared the nation’s independence in 1804 and named himself as emperor.

Soon, fearing that the French would invade and re-enslave the population, he called for the murder of all remaining white Frenchmen. Historians believe between 3,000 to 5,000 white men, women and children were killed.

The street co-naming was pulled after the City Council staff responsible for vetting street names flagged Dessalines as a possibly offensive historical figure.

Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, one of the sponsors of the Little Haiti resolution, said the City Council vetting committee raised issues about the massacre and wanted to get more information.

Williams said he considered that questioning a typical part of the process, but acknowledged that he has had concerns about the vetting procedure since he joined the council nine years ago.

“There is this equating of historical figures who are oppressors and historical figures who fought back against oppression,” Williams said. “It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.”

Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, the first Haitian-American woman elected to office in New York City and one of the leaders of Little Haiti BK, the nonprofit group that helped create the district, is concerned by the delay.

“Columbus murdered a lot of people and still people across the nation recognize him as a hero,” Bichotte said. “It’s not the same standards when it comes to black leaders.”

Mabel O. Wilson, a professor of architecture at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and associate director at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, said Bichotte has a point.

“What we define as history is from a Western European tradition. It affects the way history is written, monuments are built and narratives are defined,” Wilson said.

The push to create the Little Haiti cultural district was reignited after President Donald Trump made disparaging remarks about Haiti and ended a program that allowed Haitians to live and work in the United States after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

“The mentality of Dessalines is you have to go and win the fight,” Bichotte said. “And that’s the type of heroes we are looking for, especially in this time of Trump.”

A spokeswoman for Johnson, Jennifer Fermino, declined to say why the Dessalines street co-naming was flagged.

“It’s not dead. It is still being reviewed,” Fermino said in an interview. “We have a process and we are going through that process.”

The debate comes in the aftermath of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s review of “symbols of hate” around the city. Following the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments around the country, he created a committee to make recommendations about monuments and other public images in the city. In the end, the committee recommended removing only one statue — J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century surgeon who conducted experimental operations on female slaves — and altering a few other monuments.

“History is complicated,” said Wilson, who was a member of the commission. “The truth is very difficult to ascertain. History is the same way.”

Dessalines made many contributions to Haiti, from publishing the first constitution to advancing the idea of equality and a more equal distribution of wealth, said Jean Eddy Saint Paul, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the founding director of the Haitian Studies Institute.

“In the U.S. now we say ‘Black lives matter’ or ‘Black is beautiful,’ but if we take a look into the first Haitian constitution created by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, it says that for anyone, no matter the color of your skin, Haiti is a place for freedom,” Saint Paul said.

The mass slaughter was an effort to prevent whites from taking control of Haiti, Saint Paul said.

“He’s a controversial figure, but it depends on the ideological lens you use to describe his political behavior,” Saint Paul said.

After conversations with the speaker’s office, Williams said he believes the street co-naming will be approved soon. “People are nervous in this day and age,” he added.

Wilson said that when giving public recognition to historical figures with a monument or naming, it is important to ask what the person is being recognized for.

“What’s the history we know and don’t know?” she asked. “There’s a question of what does it mean for us at this moment but also what will it mean for the future.”