Gerard Jean-Juste, spiritual leader of Haitian Americans, dies
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
May 27, 2009
Miami Herald
The spiritual and political leader of the Haitian community in South Florida died in Miami after suffering a stroke. He was 62.
The Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, the Roman Catholic priest whose passionate, relentless, 30-year human-rights crusade on behalf of his fellow Haitians cast him as their spiritual and political leader in South Florida, has died.
Jean-Juste was a liberation theologist, controversial in both the United States and his homeland, who battled the unequal treatment of Haitian refugees in the federal courts, in Miami's streets and in the media.
He suffered a stroke recently, according to Ira Kurzban, the Miami attorney who represented Jean-Juste's Haitian Refugee Center in several lawsuits against the U.S. government, and died Wednesday evening at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He was 62.
His death apparently was unrelated to the leukemia that Jackson doctors treated three years ago.
''The Haitian-American community has lost a visionary and a central figu re who helped to establish the Haitian community in South Florida,'' Kurzban said. ``They lost a. . .friend whose arms and heart were always open.''
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