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By Stephen P. Clark

STAMFORD - When Flanegaine Joseph, a 19-year-old Haitian immigrant, was killed in a gang-related shooting on the West Side a year-and-a-half ago, Angelucci Manigat finally heeded the Haitian community's call for its own newspaper.

For seven years, local Haitian immigrants had implored Manigat, a former journalist in the Caribbean nation and a Stamford community activist, to start a Haitian newspaper. But Manigat declined, insisting that it would cost too much money and too much time.

In January 2006, however, he changed his mind.

"When Flanegaine died, there was no effective way to reach out to the [Haitian] community," said Manigat, 44, who emigrated from Haiti 20 years ago.

Manigat also took exception to how the mainstream media cited Joseph in subsequent stories about Haitians that were not connected to the shooting.

"We've been portrayed as desperate immigrants living off the state," he said. "We wanted to show our contributions. . . . For a minority community in the United States for only 40 years, we have accomplished a lot."

Despite declining newspaper readership, Manigat used his life savings of more than $50,000 to launch the Connecticut Haitian Voice, the state's first Haitian newspaper.

The first edition was published in May 2006, with a circulation of 5,000. Since then, circulation has doubled to 10,000 in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Manigat hopes the paper becomes profitable by May.

"The response has been more positive than I expected," Manigat said from his tiny fifth-floor office on Summer Street. "I think there's a demand for it."

The free monthly publication, which runs 20 pages, offers a range of stories in English, French and Creole: from previews and coverage of Haitian events to profiles of celebrities, professionals and unsung community heroes to opinion pieces on topics affecting the Haitian community.

A graphic designer and 12 volunteers - eight staff writers, three reporters and one photographer - help Manigat produce the paper, which is printed by the Connecticut Post.

"It's something that the community really needed," said real estate agent Pascale Millien-Faustin, a volunteer who first hatched the idea for a local Haitian newspaper years ago.

Emmanuel Doreste, a Ferguson Library clerk and a volunteer for the monthly paper, said there's a misperception that Haitian-Americans only live in New York, Miami and Boston. "I think since we started this newspaper, more Haitian people from other states have become aware of the strong Haitian community in Connecticut," he said.

The Haitian Voice focuses on Stamford, which has the largest Haitian population in the state. According to the 2000 Census, more than 3,500 of Connecticut's 10,386 Haitians lived in Stamford.

By 2005, according to the American Community Survey, nearly 12,500 Haitians lived in the state and the majority - 8,393 - lived in Fairfield County. The survey could not determine the population by city.

Some Haitian observers believe the Haitian population in Stamford has grown to nearly 8,000.

Manigat plans to start circulating the paper in Haiti in three months and eventually wants it to become the fifth national Haitian newspaper in the United States, joining New York's Haiti Observateur, the largest publication, with a circulation of 75,000, and oldest, published since 1971. The Brooklyn-based Haiti Progres, with a circulation of 38,000, was created in 1983; the 10,000 circulation Haiti en Marche, which is based in Miami and established in 1986; and the 15,000 circulation Haitian Times, an all English-language newspaper based in Brooklyn and established in 1999.

But first, Manigat wants to fulfill the paper's local potential. He is seeking to work with school systems and public safety departments to provide better communication to the Haitian community.

"It will take time to be taken seriously," he said.

He is also seeking to increase circulation and attract corporate advertisers that needs to continue funding the $15,000 to $20,000 per month cost to publish and distribute the paper. His base of advertisers are Haitian professionals and mom-and-pop businesses.

Stamford immigration lawyer Philip Berns became an advertiser last month.

"I've been so impressed at the progress to an extremely fine quality paper, the lofty goals and aspirations of the papers, and the quickly expanding readership," he said, "that I decided economically it makes sense to advertise in it."

Berns has been a faithful reader of the paper since it was established last year. "It's disseminating very useful information widely," he said. "It's educating the community to assist it in integrating into American culture and society, which is what every immigrant wants to do."

Born and raised in Port Au Prince, Haiti, Manigat was a journalist for five years in the 1980s, covering culture and politics during the oppressive regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, who succeeded his father Francois Duvalier, or Papa Doc.

Under their rule, which began in 1957, Haiti, the world's first-ever black republic, experienced some of the worst human rights abuses in its history.

They were said to have terrorized, tortured and murdered up to 60,000 critics or enemies of the state. This large-scale repression led to a mass immigration of Haitians starting in the 1960s to the United States and other countries.

Manigat fled Haiti in 1985 after he began hearing rumors that he had been blacklisted for his articles. He lived in East Orange, N.J., for six months until Baby Doc was forced into exile in 1986 after a revolt.

Manigat returned to Haiti for a year but quickly became dissatisfied.

"I felt I couldn't be an independent, honest journalist" in Haiti, he said. "If you're an honest journalist, you can't make money."

Manigat went back to New Jersey and made a living as a dishwasher, busboy and taxi driver. After living in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, he came to Stamford in 1998 to work as a community organizer for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a national trade union center.

"You can feel the impact of your work here, as opposed to New York, which is huge," he said.

Manigat went on to teach French at Berlitz Language Center and work as a freelance translator. In March, he launched his own translation business, Connecticut Translation LLC, to help support his wife, Damicia, and his daughter, Angie, who was born in January 2006.

Despite depleting his life savings to launch a newspaper just as his child was being born, neither he nor his wife had second thoughts, he said

"When you're a dreamer, you have to go with your dreams," he said.

Source: Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.