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Haitian-Americans and local residents gathered for the celebration that unveiled Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Street Is Renamed in Flatbush, to Joy and Controversy

By News & Current Affairs

By Jeffery C. Mays, The New York Times — Stephania Casimir, a first-generation Haitian-American, remembers her parents talking about Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who became one of Haiti’s founding fathers, but not all of the details. They came flooding back on Saturday on a street corner in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn as speakers explained why a stretch of Rogers Avenue was being co-named in honor of Dessalines, who declared…

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