Hayti and Hayti Heights: A Name in Dispute, a Community Built Apart

When the railroad reached Pemiscot County in eighteen ninety-four, a town was platted and needed a name. One story says it honored Doctor G. Hayes, an early landowner.

Another says the name came from the nation of Haiti, which was spelled Hayti throughout the nineteenth century, a gesture toward Black independence and resilience on the edge of the Missouri Bootheel. Just to the west, Hayti Heights incorporated separately as a community established by African Americans, today more than three-quarters Black, built alongside but apart from the railroad town. Together the two Haytis sit near the Arkansas border in one of the most heavily agricultural corners of Missouri, cotton fields stretching to the horizon, the New Madrid seismic zone not far away beneath their feet.