It is strange for this columnist to see Springfield, Ohio become a focus of national news stories. Springfield was my late mother’s hometown and aside from having the most popular city name in the country, never received media attention. My grandparents came north from Alabama during the first great migration and like millions of others made their home in cities which offered a degree of economic opportunity and some relief from the worst of Jim Crow segregation.

The state of Ohio was a manufacturing colossus for many decades. Small cities like Springfield thrived until finance capital defeated manufacturing capital and the loss of a tax base and living wage jobs devastated the lives of millions of people in that state and in others. The term “rust belt” is quite apt and tells us why Ohio lost a total of three congressional seats due to population loss in the 2010 and in the 2020 census es. The largest Ohio State University alumni association outside of the state is in Naples, Florida , an indicator of Ohio’s misfortunes.

But one person’s loss is another’s gain, as Haitian immigrants discovered. They began moving to Springfield just like immigrants of past generations where neighborhoods have names like Irish Hill. Population loss created a labor shortage and, just as it did with past generations, the city declared itself a Welcoming City in 2014 in order to secure more workers. This time the immigrants weren’t white or Latino, they were Black people from Haiti.

From its very beginnings as a nation that ended slavery by force of arms, Haiti has been the focus of racist hatred. The Haitian revolution stoked fear across........

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