The Foundation We Stand On: Honoring African American Leadership and Sacrifice
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February 13, 2026 | Written By: Dr. Erlange Elisme
Introduction: Standing on a Foundation
Every February, we speak the name Martin Luther King Jr. We know his dream. We can recite the speech. But there is something we do not always understand: the ground beneath our feet in America was broken open by people we do not always remember. And when we forget them, we forget ourselves. We forget the truth of how we came to be here.
I am Haitian. I am also American. I understand both languages, both cultures, both histories. As Haitians living here in the U.S., we are resilient people. We hold several truths at once. We know our own strength. We have built businesses, raised families, created communities from very little. This is not a small thing. Our pride in these accomplishments is right and necessary.
But we can also know this: our resilience did not emerge in a vacuum. It was made possible by doors that others opened before we arrived. And when we understand this, something important shifts. We stop seeing African American struggle and our own success as separate stories. We see them as connected. We see ourselves as standing on a foundation.
A Gesture of Honor: Gwo Kout Chapo
As people in the Haitian diaspora, we offer a gwo kout chapo to our African American brothers and sisters. We honor their ancestors and their living communities for the sacrifices, organizing, and resistance that broke open systems never designed to include them. We acknowledge their resilience in the face of institutions that have continually targeted Black bodies, Black families, and Black futures. Their struggle was not abstract. It was daily, costly, and sustained. And it is because of their fight against segregation, exclusion, and injustice that many of us in the diaspora were able to arrive, settle, work, learn, and build in this country. This acknowledgment is offered with respect, gratitude, and solidarity.
The Cost of Silence: Understanding Erasure
This erasure is not malicious. It is, in many ways, what happens when we have not been taught the full story. But in a moment when there are deliberate efforts to rewrite American history, to minimize and deny Black contributions to this country, our silence becomes a kind of forgetting that costs us.
Let me be specific. When someone tells a Haitian friend, "You are so hardworking, so disciplined," they often mean it as a compliment. They are noticing real things. But what they may not understand is that the very institutions where that Haitian friend learned, worked, and built a life were secured by African American teachers who fought for desegregation. They were made accessible by African American nurses and doctors who demanded entry into medical schools and hospitals. They were protected by African American lawyers and civil rights workers who argued in courtrooms, marched in streets, and sometimes gave their lives so that people of color could have a place at the table.
When we celebrate our accomplishments without this context, we create a false narrative. We suggest that our success came from our effort alone. And in doing so, we subtly distance ourselves from African Americans. We suggest, without meaning to, that they did not work hard enough. That something is different about us. That we are separate.
This is a dangerous division.
The Doors They Opened: Stories of Sacrifice
The reality is different. It is more humbling and more beautiful. The reality is that African Americans opened doors in American schools, hospitals, courtrooms, and boardrooms. They did this work not just for themselves but for all of us. They could not have imagined every face that would walk through those doors. But they fought anyway. They fought for principle. They fought for dignity. They fought because it was right.
Consider education. Thurgood Marshall argued Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Many of us do not know his name. We do not know that he spent his career taking cases that seemed unwinnable, arguing that separate could never be equal. That case changed America. It made space for Haitian children to sit in classrooms with white children. It made space for our children to attend universities. The doors were opened by African American lawyers, teachers, and activists who believed in a country where their own children and the children of others could learn together.
Or consider healthcare. When African American doctors and nurses fought for integration in hospitals, they were not just fighting for themselves. They were fighting for a future where any of us could go to a hospital and find a doctor who understood our bodies, our histories, our languages. Dr. Charles Drew, Dr. Norman Francis, and countless others whose names we may not know insisted on their right to practice medicine, to teach medicine, to lead medicine. Because of their insistence, Haitian nurses and doctors now work alongside colleagues of every background.
Economic opportunity followed the same pattern. African American entrepreneurs, despite redlining and discrimination that made it nearly impossible to borrow money or own property, built businesses anyway. They fought for fair hiring practices. They organized unions and demanded better wages. They created pathways that others, including Caribbean immigrants, would later walk.
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The Sacrifice They Made: Fighting Without Knowing
What strikes me most is this: African Americans fought not knowing if they would benefit. They fought for an idea of America that they themselves would not fully see realized. Many did not live to see their children graduate from integrated universities or enter integrated workplaces. Many did not see the day when immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, and across the Caribbean would walk into spaces that had been made available through their sacrifice.
And yet we do not always remember them.
Knowing and Acknowledging: The Difference That Matters
There is a difference between not knowing and not acknowledging. Many of us genuinely have not been taught this history. We have been told simplified stories about Martin Luther King Jr. and a dream, without understanding the years of organizing that came before and after. We have not been taught that his dream was built on the foundation of thousands of people whose names we will never know. Teachers who integrated schools. Mothers who sent their children into hostile classrooms. Activists who were beaten and imprisoned. Ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
This is where division enters. When we celebrate Haitian accomplishment without understanding its roots, we may inadvertently participate in the same erasure happening today in American policy and public discourse. We may allow ourselves to be positioned against African Americans, as if there is a limited amount of dignity or recognition to go around.
But that is not how history works. Our stories are not separate. When we honor African American sacrifice and leadership, we are honoring the ground that holds us. We are choosing solidarity over division.
My Own Journey: A Personal Testament
I think about my own journey. I became a school social worker because I believed in education. I worked in schools because I believed they could be places of healing and transformation. I could do that work because of what African Americans fought for. Every Haitian student I served, every child navigating a system that could feel foreign or unwelcoming, was there because of African American determination decades before I was born.
How We Honor This Legacy: A Path Forward
How do we honor this legacy? We begin by knowing. We begin by asking questions. We begin by teaching our children not just that Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, but how many people made that dream possible. We begin by understanding that celebrating ourselves does not require diminishing others. In fact, we cannot fully celebrate ourselves without honoring those who came before.
There is also a practical choice before us. In a moment when there are real efforts to erase Black history from curricula and public memory, we can remain silent, or we can speak. We can teach our children that being Haitian and honoring African American leadership are not contradictory. They are the same act of remembrance.
This is not about guilt. It is about clarity. It is about seeing history as it actually unfolded. It is about understanding that the Haitian nurse in a hospital, the Haitian teacher in a classroom, the Haitian entrepreneur running a business are all standing on a foundation built by people who fought so that foundation could exist.
Conclusion: We Choose, Together, Not to Forget
When we see this clearly, something shifts. We stop competing. We start recognizing one another. We understand that lifting up African American history does not take away from our own story. It completes it. It tells the truth.
This Black History Month, go deeper than the familiar names. Learn about the organizing in your own city. Learn about the teachers, nurses, activists, and everyday people who paid a cost for what you now have. Tell these stories to your children, not as something separate from your own story, but as the very foundation of it.
And recognize this: in honoring them, we honor ourselves. We honor the solidarity that made our presence possible. We choose, together, not to forget.
About the Author
Dr. Erlange Elisme is a trauma-informed care leadership and practice specialist with over 30 years of experience as a school social worker. As Founder and CEO of Elisme Consulting Services LLC, she provides training and consulting to organizations committed to healing-centered practices. Dr. Elisme holds certification in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from Harvard Medical School, and has completed advanced continuing education in Trauma-Informed Care, Immigrant Mental Health, and Motivational Interviewing. She is a published author, host of the "Resilient Voices" podcast (available in English and Haitian Creole), and a 2025 Gwinnett Chamber Business Excellence Awards finalist. Fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole, Dr. Elisme brings both clinical expertise and cultural wisdom to her work of restoring resilience in individuals and communities.
Dr.Erlange Elisme, DSW
CEO / Owner & Author
Website:https://elismeconsultingservices.com
Phone number:678-595-6446