My mother, Yolande Mangones, was born in Au Cayes, Haiti in 1943 to a colonel in the army named Corneille Mangones. Yolande's mother, Anaria Beacejour, was a Cuban-African who migrated to Haiti as a child with her parents. Corneille and Anaria were never married, nor did they ever live together. Anaira had nine pregnancies, with four children that survived passed childbirth. Yolande, along with her sister Solange, were raised in their father's house and cared for by their nanny, stepmother, along with various maids, cooks, maintence workers, and drivers. Corneille could afford higher education, so Mom was trained as a Registered Nurse, as were many educated Haitian women at that time. While in nursing school, she met my dad Jean Guichon. They married after graduation. Shortly after, they had their first child, my brother, Ronald Jude.
Although Yolande was reared in a privileged class, she grew up watching her father's political opinion and voice silenced. He lived in fear that his opposition to the political regime would cost him either his freedom or his life. Jean-Claude "Papa Doc" Duvalier had been President for decades - having declared himself "President for Life" - parsing power and assets out to his henchmen serving as ministers to the government agencies. They further corrupted the system and committed human injustices. Yolande decided that life would be better in North America where she would have a voice to speak out and help to organize a more democratic system in her homeland.
Life would be better in the United States where she would have a voice to speak out and help to organize a more democratic system at home.
Yolande was the first in our family and to secure a work authorization for the U.S. Having left her husband and two-year-old son in Haiti, she arrived in Chicago in the summer of 1968 - jumping from one political boiling pot into another. Yolande settled on Chicago's South Side, moving in with friends during the heat of the civil rights movement, the Democratic National Convention brawl in Chicago, and shortly after the assassination of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Welcome to United States of America!
