NOLA 2022 Service Learning Trip – Day 1: Levee tour (Lower 9th Ward)

We started off our trip with a bang. Historically, the Lower Ninth Ward has been home to a large black close-knit black community. This community helped to support the city of New Orleans through their production of crops. In 1927 an affluent community of New Orleans became fearful that their part of the city would flood during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. In an attempt to protect their own community, the affluent, privileged, and more powerful people decided to sacrifice the already unfortunate and less powerful historically black community of the Lower Ninth Ward. The company that built the levees promised reimbursement for the damage. After the Lower Ninth Ward’s portion of the levee was sufficiently destroyed by the hurricane, so was their community. The promised reimbursement never came. This tragically historic event sowed the seeds of distrust when the levee breached in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina.When the same storm wall broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there was obviously distrust. These suspicions became even stronger when reports of a loud bang were reported to have been heard as the storm wall breached. Although later evidence would reveal that it was likely a nearby unoccupied barge in the Mississippi River that smashed into and breached the storm wall. This did not quell the long-standing distrust towards those in power. To this day the Lower Ninth Ward has not recovered and returned to the state that it was even after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Many homes are left destroyed or gone entirely, amenities such as grocery stores or restaurants are absent, no schools are held, and the notorious “Brad Pitt” homes are seen as a failure. Today there are few efforts currently that hope to even try to maintain what is currently left in The Lower Ninth Ward and it continues to be neglected. It is unclear when or if their community will ever be restored.On the 2022 NOLA service learning trip we all saw first-hand the current state of the Lower Ninth Ward. We saw some of the decrepit homes, abandoned school, destructed roads, foreboding Bayou Bienvenu Wetlands triangle, and the new giant floodwall. Fortunately, the Lower Ninth Ward is not completely neglected and had/has some attempts to restore their community such as the (notorious) Brad Pitt houses, but also community members using hydroponics to sustain gardens or organizations restoring the Bayou Bienvenu Wetlands triangle, located right along the Lower Ninth Ward. We were able to visit and learn about both of these locations later in our trip.