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IN A SPRINGFIELD HAITIAN RESTAURANT, LOVE—AND GOAT—CONQUER HATE
 
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Tim Feran
September 19, 2024
The New Republic
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_ While Donald Trump and J.D. Vance try to tear an Ohio town apart,
Ohioans themselves have a more heartening response. While the nasty
headlines swirl around them, Springfielders and Ohioans are making a
point of saying no to Trump and Vance’s message _

Diners at Rose Goute Creole Restaurant in Springfield, Ohio, on
September 12, Photo: Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse(AFP) // The
New Republic

 

“Haitians like goat. _That’s_ the meat for Haitians.”

Romane Pierre, the manager of Rose Goute Creole Restaurant in
Springfield, Ohio, looked tired but happy as he rushed to take orders
from customers. The most popular item on the menu, he said with a
grin, was rice and beans with goat. It was supposed to be Pierre’s
day off, but the Haitian eatery had seen a huge increase in business
in the days after the national spotlight turned its focus on
Springfield.

The story, which you’d need to be from Mars not to know by now,
began in early September, when rumors popped up on social media that
Haitian immigrants in the small Ohio city were stealing and eating
pets. The rumors gained traction when former President Donald
Trump referred to them
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the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s
running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, continued to spread the lie
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even as Vance’s constituents in Springfield became the target
of dozens of bomb threats
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prompting schools and government offices to close or switch to doing
business online.

But in an aging (albeit recently resurgent) retail strip center in
south Springfield anchored by a Family Dollar store, Rose Goute Creole
was open for business. Even though it was a weekday afternoon, at a
time when the staff normally would have been refilling napkin
dispensers and preparing for the dinner rush, the place was almost
half-full with diners.

Jim and Jackie Shulman had driven over from their home in Columbus to
visit Springfield’s history museum and had decided to stop into the
restaurant, which itself has been the focus of social media posts.
Photos online showing crowds lining up to get plates of Haitian food
had piqued their interest.

Before those social media posts about Rose Goute Creole appeared,
“we didn’t even know it existed,” Jim Shulman said. “I think
it’s great.”

He smiled broadly as his wife packed up several to-go cartons. Rose
Goute Creole serves enormous portions, and most diners followed the
Shulmans’ example and took home leftovers.

That included a couple sitting at the table next to the Shulmans.

Jeffrey Tilley and Coretta Thomas, from the Dayton suburb of Huber
Heights, “heard all the rhetoric,” Tilley said. “So we decided
to do our part and spread the love. And the first thing you know, we
run into some good people,” he said, nodding to the Shulmans.

“I feel sorry for people who are missing out on some good food,”
Thomas said. “We are definitely coming back. We usually go to Los
Mariachis, but now we have a couple places.”

Ohioans often joke that the South doesn’t begin below the
Mason-Dixon line—it actually begins below Interstate 70, the
east-west highway that neatly bisects the state, running straight
through the centrally located capital city, Columbus.

They’re not entirely joking. Drive less than an hour east from
Columbus, and less than an hour west along the interstate, and
remnants of the South and its violent, racist past manifest themselves
in surprising ways.

To the east of Columbus is Buckeye Lake. Built in the early nineteenth
century as a reservoir for the Ohio Canal, the lake became a
recreational area in those days for vacationing Ohioans—including
members of the Ku Klux Klan, which had experienced a revival in the
early twentieth century. Buckeye Lake was so popular with the Klan
that the once-thriving interurban rail line ran special cars to
transport Klansmen and their families to the area. The “Grand
Dragon” of the Indiana Klan, D.C. Stephenson, even had a summer home
at Buckeye Lake, and under his leadership in 1925 the Klan held a
gathering billed as the “largest Konclave in the United States,”
with an estimated 75,000 white-robed Klansmen in attendance. (This was
just before he viciously raped and murdered a young woman who worked
on an adult literacy program.)

While the lake’s past as a Klan haven is forgotten among many
Ohioans, the place remains 97 percent white, according to the 2020
census.

To the west of Columbus, meanwhile, is Springfield. There, a home
built in 1850—the Gammon House, after owners George and Sarah
Gammon—played a crucial role during the Civil War as a stop on the
Underground Railroad. While some runaway slaves continued north,
others set down roots in and around the Springfield area, which over
the decades has held some important distinctions in the Black
community. In 1875, Springfield-based Wittenberg University admitted
its first Black student. Less than 20 miles south of the city is
Wilberforce University, founded in 1856 as the nation’s first
private historically Black university. Near to that school is the
National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center. And in 1966,
Springfield’s City Commission appointed Robert Henry as the first
Black mayor in Ohio.

Even so, Springfield has hardly been without racial conflict.

In March 1904, a mob of white residents stormed the jail and seized
Richard Dixon, a Black man accused of killing a police officer. The
mob killed Dixon, strung up his body from a pole and continued
shooting the corpse, then destroyed and burned Black neighborhoods in
the city. Two years later, an altercation between a white man and a
Black man sparked another riot, with a white mob burning down a
significant portion of a Black neighborhood.

With such a fraught history, then, it seems almost inevitable that a
self-described hillbilly who grew up in the South—or rather, south
of I-70, about 50 miles outside of Springfield—would break out a
rhetorical noose and string up an unsuspecting group of Black migrants
who, much like their predecessors during the Civil War, simply sought
refuge and work in a small Ohio city.

It’s important to note that Haitians were invited to come to
Springfield. In 2014, the city began its “Welcome Springfield”
initiative to attract newcomers to replenish its dwindling population.

But while most Haitians in the United States live in Florida or the
Northeast, the small population of Springfield—just over 58,000 in
2022—means that even a few thousand newcomers are noticeable and
have put a strain on the community’s social services.

Rose Goute Creole opened last year in Springfield to serve the influx
of Haitian immigrants. Wedged between a Latin Market and a Beauty
Depot in a retail strip that could be in any neighborhood in America
that has seen its share of ups and downs, Rose Goute quickly gained a
good reputation, with online reviews giving it top ratings for “Best
Caribbean food.”

A few days after bomb threats shut down many schools and government
offices, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine talked about the important role
that Haitians are playing in Springfield’s efforts to rebuild from a
long decline.

“Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of
companies coming in,” DeWine said
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an interview with ABC News. “These Haitians came in to work for
these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good
workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And frankly,
that’s helped the economy now.”

Those hard-working Haitians clearly include the Rose Goute Creole
staff. As Pierre shuttled in and out of the kitchen, placing orders
and picking up trays to deliver to the sit-down dining crowd, he spoke
in Haitian Creole to customers waiting to pick up bags of carry-out
meals.

A few feet away, Scott Roderick and his wife, Kelly Kight, were just
beginning to dig into the food piled high on their plates.

“I was here with my brother Dave when it opened about a year ago,”
Roderick said. “We had read about it. Dave and I—he’s a
vegetarian, so he’s always on the lookout for a new place.” He
continued: “Kelly and I are very adventurous eaters. We live about
five miles south of here, and after Dave and I checked it out, I said
to Kelly, ‘We’ve got to go back.’”

Looking around at the other diners, he added, “I’m glad to see
we’re not the only ones with a brilliant idea” to stop in for a
meal.

“We’ve lived in Springfield about eight years now, and I remember
there was a Kroger” in the shopping strip. “This part of south
Springfield was a food desert until about five years ago. I think
Springfield has done a good job bringing this area back.”

While the nasty headlines swirl around them, Springfielders and
Ohioans are making a point of saying no to Trump and Vance’s toxic
message—and making Romane Pierre work overtime. When asked if
business has been good since the restaurant became a cause célèbre,
he stopped his perpetual motion for a brief moment, sighed, and shook
his head: “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Very, very good business.”

_[TIM FERAN is a freelance journalist based in Columbus, Ohio.]_

* Haitian immigrants
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* Springfield
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* Ohio
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* Donald Trump
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* J.D. Vance
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* Racism
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* anti-immigrant
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* xenophobia
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* 2024 Elections
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* MAGA
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* GOP
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* Republican Party
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* racist hysteria
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* campaign lies
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* KKK
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* Ku Klux Klan
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