John Legend Defends ‘Hardworking’ Haitian Community In Hometown Of Springfield Against ‘Racist Lies’

Singer John Legend defended the “hardworking” Haitian immigrant community in his hometown of Springfield, Ohio, emphasizing how the city had benefited from their contribution and blasting the “racist lies” about them pushed by some on the online right and Trump campaign.

Legend, whose real name is John R Stevens, took to Instagram after his hometown was name-dropped during Tuesday’s ABC-hosted presidential debate by former President Donald Trump, who repeated an unfounded online conspiracy theory that Haitians in Springfield were “eating people’s pets.” The rumors were denied by the town’s mayor, local police, and the state’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine.

The claims were first pushed online by MAGA influencers and worked their way up through to the Trump campaign itself, becoming a hot political narrative for Republicans who wanted to attack Vice President Kamala Harris’s policy record on immigration.

In his rebuttal, Legend detailed the sharp drop in population in Springfield over his lifetime as job opportunities dried up and people left. After an industrial boom locally, he said, Haitian immigrants who the federal government granted visas had made their home there and taken up jobs that the town could not fill.

Defending the immigrants, he said:

Some facts about immigrants. They usually do very well here. They are hardworking, they’re ambitious, they commit less crime than native-born Americans, and they will assimilate and integrate in time. But it takes time. So, I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace that we would want our ancestors to have when they moved here with our Haitian brothers and sisters who move here too. And nobody’s eating cats. Nobody is eating dogs. We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment.

He continued with a plea for unity and compassion:

How about we love one another? I grew up in the Christian tradition. We said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and treat strangers as though they might be Christ. So how about we adopt that ethos when we talk about immigrants moving to our communities and don’t spread hateful, xenophobic, racist lies about them? John R. Stevens from Springfield, signing off.

Watch above on Instagram.

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