The long and deep Haiti-Jamaica connection is continuing with the success of a group, led by Jamaican Ephraim Martin, in getting an iconic street named after Chicago’s black founder, the under-recognised Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable.

The victory was achieved last Friday when Chicago city officials voted 33 to 15 to approve the ordinance — bringing into being the “Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive” — and after a hard-fought campaign fired up by the George Floyd racial protests last year in the United States.

It marked more than two centuries of mostly ignorance of DuSable’s achievement in founding America’s third-largest city, attaching his name to the outer section of the highly prized Lake Shore Drive on the so-called gold coast, near the Magnificent Mile, home of Chicago’s rich and famous.

“Without question, this DuSable victory is believed to be one of the most historic and significant victories for Chicago in over 100 years,” said Martin who led the Black Heroes Matter (BHM) Coalition which campaigned hard for the ordinance.

Martin is head of the International Reggae and World Music Awards which he started in 1982, the same year he migrated to Chicago from Jamaica and his job as a top freelance photographer at The Gleaner newspaper.

“Until 1996, John Kinzie, who purchased DuSable’s property, was on display in the Chicago Historical Society Museum as the father of Chicago,” he said in his celebratory speech following the city council vote on June 25.

He immediately gave notice that the BHM Coalition would be going after further honour for DuSable, including a 25-foot monument, a city holiday, and the long-awaited naming of a park, which was agreed 34 years ago under the city’s first black Mayor Harold Washington.

As the campaign intensified, the BHM Coalition grew to some 80 organisations and businesses, most of which had sent customised letters to current Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a black attorney, asking for proper recognition of DuSable.

The curtains came down on a successful campaign based on a compromise suggested by Mayor Lightfoot, the second woman in the position, that a section of the Lake Shore Drive and not the entire street be named after the Haitian.

The vote Friday means that a 17-mile stretch of the expressway from the North to the South Sides on the outer drive will be named the Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lake Shore Drive, avoiding the necessity to change hundreds of addresses.

It is expected to end the long ignorance about the history of DuSable who is not taught in Chicago schools, according to the heritage association bearing his name.

DuSable settled on 800 acres near the mouth of the Chicago River 240 years ago, married Kittihawa a member of the Potawatomie tribe and became a prominent fur and grain trader in the area.

The USA Today newspaper said the site of DuSable’s settlement along the Chicago River is a national historic landmark, and a small bronze bust of him at the downtown location overlooks the water. A school, museum, harbour, bridge and unfinished park have been named in his honour, the paper said.

But Chicago Alderman David Moore and Alderwoman Sophia King, who spearheaded the campaign within the city council, argued that the bust downtown was “little known recognition” and “very few people, especially tourist and new Chicagoans, know DuSable as the founder of Chicago”.

Martin noted that some time after DuSable established Chicago, the city’s boundaries were drawn up but the streets were named only after white men, and efforts since then to honour him had met with stiff resistance.

That raised questions about the racial motivation behind the failure to give greater honour to the city founder, the BHM complained. It pointed to the fact that in Friday’s vote, all 14 whites and the one Latino members, voted against.

Moore approached Martin in 2019 about his renewed campaign to reverse the wrongs against DuSable, and retired appeal judge Shelvin L M Hall, Martin’s wife, came up with the name Black Heroes Matter, which was registered under Martin’s International foundation to start the coalition.

The latest leg of the campaign kicked off on July 4, last year, in the wake of the killing of black American George Floyd by a white Minneapolis cop who last week was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

“The name change and the other proposals when implemented will be a testament to the world that Chicago is leading the way to correct wrongs of the past, and to end systemic racism, for the rest of the country to take note and follow,” Martin said.

In presentations to the city council, Martin’s group insisted: “People will now know that over 240 years ago in 1779, this land we enjoy as Chicago was started by a black man by the name of DuSable, from the Caribbean country of Haiti, but because of the colour of his skin he was denied his respect and credit.”

Martin, a native of St Thomas is admired as an achiever and social activist. Shortly after moving to Chicago, Illinois, he founded the Chicago Music Awards, believing that Jamaica’s reggae was severely under-promoted internationally and could be a voice for the voiceless peoples of the world.

Under his Martin’s International company, he launched the International Reggae Music Awards soon after, later expanding it to the International Reggae and World Music Awards, with emphasis on Caribbean and African music genres.

He has also hosted July 4th and Labour Day Caribbean cultural festivals in Chicago, and championed popular political causes, including the work of Jamaican National Hero Marcus Garvey; civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr and late South African hero Nelson Mandela. He campaigned hard for the election of the first black US President Barack Obama.

The BHM has planned a rally for this Saturday, to be followed by a convoy along the DuSable Drive route, to serve as a unifying event after the bitterness of the campaign.