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Race Relations, Class, and Voting Rights

10 Years Later: Hurricane Katrina Rages On

One of the most surprising things about growing up poor and becoming firmly middle class is realizing just how much disdain many middle and upper income people have toward people with lower incomes. It was very surprising to me that they had considered my poverty to be connected to laziness or a lack of intelligence equal to theirs and that I was somehow less moral. Even after all these years in the middle class, I am still amazed at how people assign human value to others based simply on income. Never was this more profoundly illustrated than when Katrina struck New Orleans.

Ten years later, Katrina memories and the lessons she taught rage on in my mind. These are the things I remember most.

A group waving to responders for help on top of the roof of a home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them." - Comments by former first lady Barbara Bush during a Marketplace interview on public radio upon visiting thousands of displaced people on cots in the temporary residence made for them at the Houston Astrodome.

I remember on the third day, the CNN camera panning the crowd at the Convention Center as they chanted, "Help Us! Help Us! Help Us!" ending with this little child saying “Can we please get some help?” Americans desperate for water, adult children begging for some medical attention for their elderly parents for whom they had had to stay when they wanted to evacuate, parents begging for food for their babies, yet for days, nothing as basic as water was delivered and access to stores was prevented by armed officials. I close my eyes and try to imagine a row of elderly middle and upper income mothers or babies being allowed to sit outside with NO help for three days. Surely since you had resources available, wouldn’t you do what you could to help rather than just let them die? Who ignores the elderly and babies unless their humanity had for some reason been devalued?

Nearly half the Katrina fatalities in Louisiana were people over the age of 74.

Source: The Data Center, FEMA

I remember someone in New Orleans telling me that developers were scouting potential land grabs while the television was telling me it was too dangerous for anyone to go in yet. Lines of boaters and semi-trailers loaded with water were being turned away by FEMA reps while people became dehydrated and ill or died. No one could bring the people rescue, food and water because the people were “dangerous.” The reports said that people were shooting at rescue helicopters so they had to suspend rescue operations. How could anyone see the humanity of people in trouble and still conclude that people stranded on roof tops and in flooded homes were shooting for any other reason than to get the pilot’s attention to come help them? But these particular human beings were “too dangerous” to be helped.

I remember my close friend who was in communication with her son in the military. His unit out of Texas was fully ready to move out only to be told to wait yet another day while people were trapped in overheated attics or in contaminated waters. Did these lives not matter enough for quick military deployment? Didn’t I see on the news less than one month later, the American military drop food and water to Afghans within a day of a disaster situation?

A group transporting small children through knee-deep water.

"Now, tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?" - Tom Delay's (former member of Congress from TX) comment recorded by Houston Chronicle as Delay watched children evacuated from New Orleans playing at the Astrodome and likened their stay to being at camp.

I remember a radio broadcast of a doctor literally begging for medicine and assistance to move some patients. Patients in a hospital were given drugs to kill them because staff had no power and didn’t think that anyone was coming to get them while other hospitals received airlifts of their patients. Why the difference?

No home, no ID, no access to a bank or money, children starving, yet people were treated instead like criminals—but just the locals, not the tourist who went in stores and got what they needed after the storm. Victims were given negative labels—looters and refugees (which by definition applies only to people having to leave a country) and blamed for not having vehicles or money to put gas in a car to leave. And even when they tried to walk out the city, there were armed policemen from the next town who would not let them through.

People thrown to the wind, put on buses and planes to places unknown to them, separated from their families, often without the resources to ever return home. No accounting for where many were sent….Imagine this happening to anyone who was considered “important”…..

Yes, Katrina was a turning point for me. I never thought that in a country of so many resources that political wrangling could so overshadow the preservation of life. Finding out who or what is worthy of saving in the time of a disaster was real eye-opening. Katrina is a storm that continues to rage in my spirit….

I'm glad history matters to you!

Speaker, Author, Race Relations Strategist
History Matters Institute, A Division of the Scott Brown Group, LLC
www.cleoscottbrown.com

Forward

This edition is dedicated to the Grinnell/Thornton families who relocated to Charleston, SC and joined my church, having left New Orleans with only about three days' possessions. Three of the five family members have since passed. This essay is written in their memory and the memory of the approximately 1200 people who died in New Orleans due to Katrina and subsequent flooding.

In Memory (Mother & Daughter)

Geraldine Grinnell & Georgia Thornton

The Facts:

Katrina’s storm surge caused 53 different levee breaches in greater New Orleans leaving approximately 80% of the city flooded

Katrina displaced over 1 million people from the central Gulf coast, distributing them to other parts of the U.S.

New Orleans Population Prior to Katrina: 485,000
Population the Year After Katrina: 230,172
2014: 384,320 (still almost 100,000 fewer people)

How the City Changed Since the Storm:
Hispanic population up 40.9% from pre-storm levels
Black down 30.5%
White down 7.7%
Asian up 2.1%

(Stats per NPR, August 19, 2015)

**************************

I am from Louisiana and the Christmas after the storm, my family drove down to New Orleans. Never will I forget the deafening sound of silence. To stand in the middle of the street in a major city, not far from Xavier University, and hear absolutely nothing, no sound, no movement, no life. It was undescribably eerie. This picture was taken on that trip.

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MUST READ BOOK ON KATRINA
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

I believe that everyone in America should read this book which is an expansion of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article written by Sheri Fink for the New York Times in 2009. It is the story of New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center and what happened at this hospital when thousands of people were trapped there without power after Katrina. Eventually, decisions were made to euthanize some of the patients, all of whom were not ill to the point of death. The euthanizing of patients actually occurred very near the time that help finally arrived to evacuate the entire hospital. It is a totally disturbing true story of ethics, who gets to live after a disaster when there are limited resources and who is allowed to die and who gets to decide. You will never forget Five Days at Memorial.

Can we talk?

Cleo Scott Brown is a woman on a mission. That mission? To use history to generate insightful, meaningful discussions about race relations, voting rights and social class that lead to introspection and change. The founder of the History Matters Institute, Cleo exudes new school wisdom and makes history relevant.

Although oft considered ‘taboo’ topics, Cleo is a dynamic and gifted speaker with the ability to put audiences at ease while leading them to a place of heightened awareness and understanding.

Powerful Informative Inspiring Insightful

Learn more here about what she can bring to your organization.

"Witness to the Truth"

River Reads Summer Reading Selection
Ouachita (Monroe, LA) Parish Libraries 2008

Witness to the Truth chronicles my father’s journey to secure voting rights for a predominately black town where African Americans were kept from the polls for 80 years. It records almost one hundred years of life in northeast Louisiana, including my father’s grandparents’ recollections of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and his own recollections of the migrations between the two World Wars, the displacement of African American farmers during the New Deal, and the shocking methods white southerners used to keep African Americans under economic domination and away from the polls.

Reader Comments

“This book is so well written as told through the voice of Scott, it is difficult to put it down. Its contents also are of major importance…In a simple but profound fashion, Scott explains the rationale behind segregation and its psychological effects on whites and blacks, which is a key factor in understanding today’s racial problems.” - The Post and Courier (Charleston)

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About Cleo

Cleo Scott Brown, author of Witness to the Truth, speaks nationally on race relations, black history, and voting rights, helping audiences connect the past with the present. She has also lived her subject, and like her father, who is the central figure in her book, she believes that her experiences have been for a greater purpose. Learn more about Cleo here.