In Brooklyn, Haitian Culture Day Parade Honors History, Resilience and Unity

On May 10, thousands gathered in Brooklyn for the sixth annual Haitian Culture Day Parade. Behind the festivities were stories of immigrants balancing pride, community and the pressures of living under heightened immigration enforcement.

Two days before the Haitian Culture Day Parade, the former Walgreens on Avenue D in Brooklyn buzzed with energy. Inside the temporary headquarters of Life of Hope, a nonprofit supporting Brooklyn’s Haitian community, sunlight poured through large windows onto an open space now divided into makeshift partitions and small offices. The hum of a sewing machine mixed with bursts of Creole conversation as five immigrant women stitched for hours, preparing costumes for the upcoming parade.