Ketsia Clergé speaks on the importance of advocacy, solidarity, and support of one another across our community. A native of Haiti, Ketsia originally delivered this speech as part of the Celebrating Our Neighborhood: The Arts & Culture of Haiti series at Bon Air Library on August 29th, 2026. 

who is the haitian immigrant?

When I was asked to speak about myself and my participation in the Louisville community as a Haitian immigrant, I first thought about talking about my journey, my volunteer work, my education, in short, the different ways I contribute to this community. But mine is not the story that deserves telling here.

I would rather talk about an extraordinary Haitian woman whose name deserves to be far better known: Juliette Noël Toussaint. She was born enslaved in Saint-Domingue, my country, Haiti, around 1786, the date itself uncertain, as birth dates so often are for enslaved Black women, whose lives archives long deemed unworthy of precise record. During the Haitian Revolution, her family was displaced to the United States along with their enslavers. It was there that she met Pierre Toussaint, another Haitian who had also known slavery. Pierre had managed to build a relatively comfortable financial situation in New York through his work as a hairdresser, and he used that money to purchase freedoms: that of Juliette Noël, the woman he would marry, as well as that of her sister Rosalie (New York Historical Society, n.d.; New York Public Library, n.d.).

This detail matters. Because to speak of Juliette Toussaint is not simply to speak of a Haitian immigrant who came to the United States and succeeded. It is to speak of a woman who had known slavery, and whose life would go on to embody a work of liberation, mutual aid, and community building.

With Pierre, Juliette turned their home and their resources into spaces of solidarity. They took in orphaned Black children and young people in deep precarity, contributed to their education, helped them learn a trade, and guided them toward self-sufficiency. They also helped Haitian immigrants and others in need of food, clothing, housing, or financial support (New York Public Library, n.d.; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, n.d.).

Juliette was also among the donors to the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, an organization created by free Black New Yorkers to build mechanisms of mutual aid and collective protection. In other words, they were not simply engaged in charity. They were building structures that allowed marginalized people to become more self-sufficient (Columbia University, n.d.).

And this is precisely where Juliette’s story becomes, to me, especially important. Because in her life, freedom was not limited to legal emancipation from slavery. It also meant being able to work, to learn, to have housing, to be economically self-sufficient, to participate in society. Freedom is not only a status one obtains once. It is something built anew each day.

And according to Juliette, in my view, this work is a collective responsibility.

Which brings me back to the original question: Who is the Haitian immigrant?

The Haitian immigrant is not simply a person who comes to the United States seeking a better economic situation. Nor is it simply someone who asks for help. The Haitian immigrant is also someone who creates possibilities for others: worker, student, entrepreneur, professional, parent, educator, volunteer, community leader, an active agent of social transformation.

This is part of our history, as shown in the path taken by Juliette Toussaint and her husband. They took the resources they gradually gained access to and turned them into collective resources, in service of the freedom and dignity of others.

It is within this continuity that I understand my own participation in Louisville. Whether I am volunteering with the Red Cross or accompanying my fellow Haitians, I do not see these acts as separate from my identity as a Haitian immigrant. I place myself within a tradition that precedes me, a tradition of solidarity, of service, of resistance, and above all, of working for freedom in all its forms.

Which is why, when I speak of my participation in Louisville, my new home, I do not want to place myself at the center of the story. I want to situate myself within a story that began long before me, a story of which she is one of the representatives. This is the kind of immigrant I aspire to be. And this is the kind of community member I hope to become here, in Louisville: someone who does not settle for finding her place in a community, but who helps create more room for others, whoever they are, wherever they come from.

This is what Juliette and Pierre lived long before me. They did not open their door to an origin. They opened it to a humanity.

-Ketsia Clergé