MEET SOME OF YOUR NEIGHBORS…

“SISI” OLUPTIE At 105 years old, Sisi, as you may imagine, knows something of black history. She was born and bred in the beautiful city of Cap-Haïtien in Haiti, not far from the Atlantic, “before oceans became polluted and fish were healthy and tasty.” And she left for New York before the reign of the despotic dictator, Duvalier, along with one of her sisters. They certainly didn’t want to migrate to the southern States only to live in the segregated south. After all, she was born in a nation where people of color were a free and heroic race: In 1625, France had declared the island, later named Haiti, a French colony, and it became the richest colony in the world with the essential labor of African slaves and its natural resources. Later (1791-1804) a series of conflicts between slaves, colonists, and others ultimately won Haiti’s independence from France and in 1804 became the first country to be founded by former slaves. “It’s been told,” Sisi reported to her LiLY friend that “…the people of Cap-Haïtien were the fiercest fighters! They lived by the motto: ‘Liberté ou La Morte!’” as she held her fist high. To find out more about Haitian history, you might want to do a search on Google. You may be surprised to find some of the facts about the long- standing strained relationship between Haiti and the U.S.