Racism Against Haitians Didn’t Begin in Springfield, Ohio
In the early 19th century, US elites demonized the self-liberated slaves of the Haitian Revolution as dangerous practitioners of barbaric rituals. Today Republicans rehash similar tropes to justify harsh immigration policy and whip up nativist panic.
Out of all the outlandish claims at the presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the most absurd was Trump’s exclamation that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Out of all the outlandish claims at the presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the most absurd was Trump’s exclamation that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating dogs. Not only is that a racist lie. It’s also a part of a long history of anti-Haitianism across the United States and Western hemisphere.
The history of anti-Haitian sentiment in the United States stretches back to the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, when Haiti’s enslaved population bravely overthrew French colonial rule and declared their independence. It was a monumental victory for the global abolitionist movement. Yet this triumph sent shock waves through American society, striking fear into the hearts of slaveholders and their political allies, who wielded considerable influence over the nation’s major newspapers.
Instead of celebrating Haiti’s historic uprising, the US media painted it as a dangerous contagion spreading from the Caribbean, threatening to infect the United States with notions of black rebellion and social upheaval. Haitian leaders like Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Jean-Pierre Boyer were vilified as threats to social order, fueling deep-seated racist fears that aimed to preserve the institution of slavery at any cost.
During and after the Haitian Revolution, the US press frequently reported on the supposed barbarism and primitiveness of Haiti and its people. Indeed, stories have circulated about Haitians eating animals and practicing cannibalism since the country’s founding. These accounts appeared in novels, travel narratives, and newspapers, often linking such practices to Vodou religious rituals and invoking terms like “cannibal Haiti” and “cannibal republic” to describe the nation.
In the 1884 Hayti or the Black Republic, Sir Spenser St John, a British diplomat, offered sensational accounts of alleged cannibalistic practices in Haiti, mostly based on rumors and hearsay. In a chapter titled “Vaudoux [sic] Worship and Cannibalism,” he writes, “There is no subject of which it is more difficult to treat than Vaudoux worship and the cannibalism that too often accompanies its rites.” Washington, DC’s Evening Star reported in 1902: “Vaudoux [sic] is cannibalism in the second stage. In the first instance, a savage eats human flesh as an extreme form of triumph over an enemy; the appetite grows until the food is offered to anyone.”
Stories of cannibalism and animal consumption were also propagated by US presidents during and after the Haitian Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, enslaver of more than six hundred people in his Monticello plantation, was US president during and after the revolution. He is often cited for disparaging the formerly enslaved people of Haiti as “cannibals of the terrible republic,” and historians argue his racist views influenced his isolationist policy toward Haiti.
During his time in office, Jefferson’s administration cut off aid to revolutionary leader L’Ouverture’s forces, isolated Haiti, and refused to recognize Haitian sovereignty. The Jeffersonian Republican Party, as well as the Federalist Party, feared that independent Haiti would stoke black rebellions on US soil. At the time, however, Haiti’s first emperor, the revolutionary leader Dessalines, was more concerned with the country’s financial stability and political recognition of its sovereignty around the world.
Yet these racist narratives, rooted in the anxieties of white elites, helped establish a foundation for anti-Haitianism that continues to rear its head in US politics today. Just as those early stories demonized black revolutionaries, today’s far-right politicians and commentators rely on similarly distorted imagery to vilify Haitian immigrants, painting them as a threat to national security, the economy, and even public morality.
In a tragic example, a fatal school bus crash involving a Haitian immigrant driver in Springfield, Ohio, last year set off a firestorm of anti-immigrant rhetoric. The crash killed eleven-year-old Aiden Clark and left twenty-three students injured. The driver of the other vehicle involved in the accident, whose foreign license was not valid in Ohio, became a flashpoint for far-right politicians, notably Ohio’s Republican senator J. D. Vance, who has used this tragedy to stoke xenophobic fears about Haitian immigrants. The same night that Trump alleged that Haitian migrants were “eating dogs,” the father of the child killed in the crash asked politicians not to use his son’s name for “political gain.” “Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible,” Nathan Clark said. “My son, Aiden Clark, was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.”
A History of Discriminatory Immigrant Policy
Since the onset of the pandemic, Springfield has experienced an influx of Haitian immigrants, drawn by job opportunities in manufacturing and warehousing. This local migration is part of a larger pattern, with tens of thousands of Haitians seeking refuge in the United States in recent years due to economic instability and political turmoil in Haiti. In Springfield, the arrival of as many as 20,000 Haitians in a town of about 60,000 has both revitalized the local economy and placed pressure on public services such as housing, schools, and hospitals. Yet instead of acknowledging the positive contributions of these immigrants, Vance and others have chosen to weaponize resentment against them for political gain.
In a 2021 interview published in the NACLA Report, Ninaj Raoul, cofounder of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees (HWHR), reminds us that “anti-Blackness, specifically anti-Haitianism, shapes U.S. immigration policy regardless of the political party in power.” In September 2021, the Biden administration redesignated Haiti for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — a form of protection from deportation stripped under the Trump administration — due to the country’s escalating crisis, including the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and a devastating earthquake the same year. This move acknowledged Haiti’s severe political instability, violence, and human rights abuses.
However, shortly afterward, the Biden administration announced a strategy that resulted in the rapid expulsion of thousands of Haitian migrants arriving at the US border in Del Rio, Texas. Many of these migrants were deported back to Haiti or pushed into Mexico without being able to access their lawful right to asylum screening. The harsh treatment of migrants by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — including viral scenes of horse-mounted agents corralling Haitians and appearing to use their reins as a whip — sparked public outrage and highlighted the contradictory nature of US immigration policy toward Haitians.
This targeting of Haitian immigrants is not new. It’s part of a long-standing history of discriminatory US immigration policy against Haitians. During the late 1970s, Haitians fleeing the authoritarian Duvalier regime were classified as “economic immigrants” rather than political refugees, making them ineligible for asylum despite the brutal human rights violations they faced at home. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the US Coast Guard to intercept Haitian migrants at sea and return them without proper asylum screenings.In 1991 and 1992, Haitian asylum seekers fleeing persecution in the wake of the first coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide were detained at Guantanamo over the course of six months. In May 1992, around 11,300 refugees were being held at the military base. A small percentage of migrants at Guantanamo tested HIV-positive, which resulted in those individuals being indefinitely detained and held to higher standards to prove their asylum claims, and to Haitian immigrants in general being stigmatized. Most people held at Guantanamo were deported. In 1994, Haitians (and Cubans) were again held at Guantanamo.
This vilification reached new heights when the Trump campaign, alongside Vance and other Republican figures like Ted Cruz, began to promote a patently false story that Haitian immigrants in Springfield had abducted and eaten their neighbors’ pets. There is no evidence whatsoever for these claims — local officials and law enforcement have dismissed them outright. But the rumor has nevertheless festered, fueled by social media and sensationalist rhetoric. Since Trump’s statements at the debate, institutions in Springfield have reported bomb threats. Whether or not these bomb threats are directly connected to the inflammatory and false remarks about Haitians is still unknown.
Such rhetoric is not only cruel and dehumanizing — it is a deliberate political strategy. By promoting fear and division, figures like Vance and Trump aim to galvanize their political base. The attacks on Springfield’s Haitian community echo broader anti-immigrant themes central to Trump’s campaign, including the false notion of an “invasion” of migrants and the idea that immigrants are draining social services.
The historical context matters. From the Haitian Revolution to the present day, anti-Haitianism has been a tool used to reinforce racist power structures and to undermine movements for racial equality. Just as white elites in the nineteenth century used the specter of Haitian revolutionaries to justify slavery and oppression, today’s politicians use the image of Haitian immigrants to justify harsh immigration policies and xenophobic rhetoric.
We cannot allow these old, dangerous narratives to take root again. As a society, we must reject this fearmongering and recognize the humanity and dignity of Haitian immigrants, who have long faced prejudice in the United States. They are not an invading force, but individuals and families seeking safety, opportunity, and a better life, just as generations of immigrants before them have done.