Book Review

Overcoming Katrina:
African American Voices from the Crescent City,
a collection of short stories
edited by D’Ann R. Penner
and Keith C. Ferdinand

By Judy Boudreaux

This book brings together a group of Katrina survivors whose voices are structured, colorful and entertaining despite the nature of the subject and its theme of loss.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in knowing what really happened to residents of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the days that followed.

The survivors’ voices jump off the page, allowing images of their words to take shape and the reader to re-live the tumultuous experiences for posterity’s sake. The book is divided into four sections defined by the stage of life each subject was in at the time of the flood: “Retirees,” “At the Height of Their Careers,” “Thirty Something” and “Coming of Age.”

Native New Orleanians will recognize some familiar names; and the stories are all familiar because it they will be similar to their own or someone they know. Even though the subject matter is based on recollections of individual Katrina experiences, the stories vary in quality and the types of memories summoned up as a result of the tragedy.

Each entry begins with a biographical sketch, and then the Katrina story unfolds. A sometimes candid, yet nostalgic tone seeps through the lines. The memories recalled by each are inspiring and heartfelt. It’s more than a Katrina story; it’s a collection of intimate portraits of people who survived an ordeal of mammoth proportion and lived to tell.

Showdown in Desire:
The Black Panthers Take a Stand
in New Orleans
by Orissa Arend
University of Arkansas Press, 2009
$29.95

By Mary LaCoste

Don’t read this book unless you want to get angry at our society, the lawless and those who enforce the laws. Do not read Showdown in Desire if you want to remain ignorant of how New Orleans barely escaped what could have become the bloodiest chapter in the history of the city. All this happened less than 40 years ago but has somehow faded from public consciousness.

I lived in New Orleans in those months in 1970 when Black Panthers attempted to take over the Desire Housing Project, and police massed to evict them. Both sides were heavily armed and fiercely determined. Myself, I hardly took notice, busy working and raising a family. Few citizens, both Black and White, took things seriously as tensions mounted. Now, looking back, and as outlined in the book, we see how narrowly we escaped being a city thrown into a chaos more damaging than the riots in Watts.

Orissa Arend, the author, also took little note of the events in those fateful days. It was not until three decades later, when she happened to meet the people most involved, that she began what became a life altering experience of tracking down participants, researching library records and sifting through old newspaper accounts. Now others can understand what led up to the Panthers’ stand and the aftermath.

The year 1970 was a time when middle-class Black parents worried that public high schools would drop college prep courses in favor of job training, White mothers were horrified by flower children and impoverished families focused on survival. Fear of Communism dominated national politics and the FBI became more powerful.

The Civil Rights movement was changing the American scene. Times were prosperous, but not for the poorest of the poor. The construction of huge housing projects was thought to bring an end to poverty, or to at least keep it hidden from view. But the gap continued to widen between haves and have-nots. And racism just became more subtle.

In those turbulent times, a branch of the Panther organization was founded in New Orleans. It was part of a movement begun in the mid-sixties in California that quickly spread to urban areas with messages of resistance to oppression, condemnation of the rule of capitalism and help and protection for the very poor. They lived in groups perceived as communes, dressed in militaristic fashion and caught the attention and opposition of the FBI and other authorities.

The newly formed New Orleans Panther unit settled in the second largest, most isolated and arguably the worst maintained and most crime ridden of all of the city’s housing developments, the Desire. Their presence reduced neighborhood crime and brought hope. The Panther men and women started classes and provided free breakfast every day to hundreds of the children in the neighborhood.

They also sandbagged their headquarters. And soon a chain of events, that centered on—of all things—an eviction notice, began. Before long, there was armed conflict, with police and Panthers exchanging gunfire. Before the end, hundreds of police, the entire city administration, religious leaders, the national press and hundreds of project residents were involved in what became an armed standoff inside the housing development.

The events are so complex that it is good that the book has a table of chronology, a list identifying characters, an index and hundreds of footnotes. There are detailed interviews, even of those who served as undercover agents and spies, and photographs from the newspapers of the 1970s along with recent ones showing former enemies meeting on common ground.

The book details the long and short term outcomes of the standoff. Some are still ongoing. Some Panthers (not the ones from Desire) are still in Angola; others are free. The author interviewed all she could locate who were involved on both sides. She admits she is biased toward the revolutionaries, their cause and aims, if not their means. As you read her words you come to know these people . . . and wonder why their stories have not been told before.

Danger . . . read, and you may never think the same.