Juliette Landphair

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Juliette Landphair | "The Forgotten People of New Orleans": Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

"The Forgotten People of New Orleans": Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward

Before Hurricane Katrina roared across New Orleans on August 29, 2005, few Americans had heard of the Lower Ninth Ward. After the hurricane caused major levee breaches through which waves of water rushed and tossed "homes and cars around like toys" in the area, the Lower Ninth Ward came to represent the convergence of destructive forces on a society: the hurricane; the geographical vulnerability of New Orleans; government neglect; and urban poverty and racial polarization.¹ In the half century before the storm, the Lower Ninth Ward had changed from a fairly integrated section of working-class neighborhoods to a predominantly African American community where family potlucks and poverty coexisted; yet the area's reputation as remote and irrelevant persisted from its founding through the opening years of the twenty-first century. Residents rebuffed these stereotypes, insisting that portrayals of the Ninth Ward as isolated and dangerous failed to capture what it meant to the people who lived there: family, friends, and neighborhood. Indeed, soon after Hurricane Katrina forced them out, many residents were lobbying to return home. "It's a great community," one resident declared. "We want it back."²

The narrative of two Ninth Wards emerging from rebuilding debates also distinguishes the area's history. Over time, the seemingly disparate characterizations of vibrant community and isolated backwater actually reinforced each other as the struggle to define the Ninth Ward, particularly the Lower Ninth Ward, shaped how the area grew, flourished, and suffered. Amid municipal neglect and increasing impoverishment, Lower Ninth Ward residents developed cross-generational neighborhood bonds that encouraged activist pursuit of better public services and nourished cultural traditions singular to New Orleans. In the postindustrial Crescent City, the spread of crime and poverty particularly afflicted the Lower Ninth Ward, but while homicide rates were among the highest in the city, so were home ownership rates.³ The Lower Ninth Ward story presents a complex challenge to residents and government officials alike: The area's unsteady terrain and social marginalization encouraged the development of close-knit communities of people who helped create New Orleans, yet those very geological, economic, and social vulnerabilities present enormous obstacles to residents' returning, despite their desire to do so.

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