Photo:Soyela Morrseau
Just one year ago, nine-year-old Soyela Morrseau arrived in Brooklyn from Haiti to start a new life with her family. She didn’t speak a word of English.
Fast forward one year, and Soyela is now the winner of an Oratorical Contest at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy in Brooklyn, where she was among more than 20 students participating in grades four through eight.
Soyela delivered the speech that civil rights activist Rosa Parks made on March 25, 1965, at the Alabama Freedom March.
“After researching different speeches with my classmates, we settled on this one,” Soyela says. “My classmates knew more about Rosa Parks than me. Since I had just immigrated from Haiti in 2024, I did not know much about Rosa Parks. After reading the speech for the first time, I struggled with many new words and with understanding the entire speech. Ms. Rencher and my teacher, Ms. Nicholas, further explained the history and the background of the speech. It was then that I began to love the speech. I admired how brave Rosa Parks was, and how she wanted to go and speak to a crowd of her people, even though she knew that they could.”
