Haitian immigrants share a long, proud, and storied history in America’s ever-flourishing saga of immigrants arriving to pursue the American Dream. The first permanent settler in Chicago was a black man named Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. He is believed to have been born around 1745 on the island that engulfs Haiti’s shores to a French mariner and a mother who was an enslaved person of African descent.

 

DuSable was educated in France and then, in the early 1770s, sailed to New Orleans. From there, he made his way up the Mississippi River to Illinois where he married a Potawatomi woman named Catherine in a tribal ceremony. The couple had two children, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Jr. and Suzanne. The marriage was formally recognized before a Catholic priest in Cahokia, Illinois in 1778.

 

DuSable settled along the northern bank of the Chicago River near Lake Michigan ca. 1779 and developed a prosperous trading post and farm. His cabin is often depicted as a modest structure, but written descriptions of the property suggest that DuSable may have lived more than a modest life.

 

According to original manuscripts documenting the sale of DuSable’s property, the cabin was spacious, boasting a roomy salon with five rooms off each corner. The property featured a large stone fireplace, bake and smoke houses, stables, and huts for employees, along with a fenced garden and orchard. Household furnishings included paintings, mirrors, and walnut furniture.

 

At his trading post, DuSable served Native Americans, British, and French explorers. He spoke Spanish, French, English, and several Native American dialects, which served him well as an entrepreneur and mediator. DuSable sold his estate on May 7, 1800 and moved to Peoria, Illinois. He later moved to St. Charles, Missouri, where he died on August 28, 1818. DuSable was the first man black, red, or white builder of Chicago’s first permanent home located between what is now the Loop’s Tribune Towers and the iconic Merchandise Mart. DuSable eventually sold his estate to a white businessman named John Kinnsey.

Lerone Bennett, a historian and editor for EBONY Magazine, states that he fought for ten years to get the City of Chicago to name a street after DuSable, despite local publishers for decades having touted the erroneous notion that John Kinnsey was the very first Chicagoan.

Several institutions have been named in DuSable’s honor.[13] DuSable High School opened in Bronzeville, Chicago, in 1934. The DuSable campus today houses the Daniel Hale Williams Prep School of Medicine and the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, a prominent African-American artist and writer, taught at the school for twenty-three years. She and her husband co-founded the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, located on Chicago’s South Side.[79] DuSable Hall, built in 1968, on the campus of Northern Illinois University is also named for him.[80]

DuSable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot of Randolph Street. Directly across the Chicago River from the harbor, DuSable Park is a 3.24-acre (1.31 ha) urban park in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. The project was originally announced in 1987 by Mayor Harold Washington; following years of remediation of the site[81] initial development began in early 2024.[82] A park is also named after Point du Sable in St. Charles, his other notable place of residence.[83] The US Postal Service honored Point du Sable with the issue of a Black Heritage Series 22-cent postage stamp on 20 February 1987.[84][85]

The Haitian Monument below commemorates the contributions of the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, a French regiment of free men of African descent from what is now Haiti, during the American Revolution. The work depicts five uniformed and armed soldiers, rifles pointed at the ready. One of the soldiers sits, wounded, his face contorted in a grimace as he rests his rifle across his lap and brings his right hand to his chest.

The young drummer boy, who stands just to the left of the armed group, is Henri Christophe, an important leader in the Haitian Revolution and is believed the only monarch of the Kingdom of Haiti. Christophe, who joined the Chasseurs-Volontaires as a teen is believed, although firm proof does not exist, to have participated in the Siege of Savannah.

(c) D Day Media Group, Inc. 2024