Reviews

ticularly after 1965. She shows that old and new forms of violence continued to impact Black lives during the late twentieth century. Other contributors offer new insights and point toward future areas of research. Cherisse Jones-Branch challenges readers to rethink white- produced narratives of Black women’s criminal- ity after World War I and instead interpret their actions as reflecting desire for opportunity. Mi- chael Pierce disputes the claim made by some scholars that white landowners sought Mexican braceros after World War II due to a labor short- age. By studying the activism of Ethel Dawson, Pierce contends that Lincoln County planters hired seasonal workers to drive down wages and incentivize Blacks to leave the county to preserve white political power. John A. Kirk explores the continuities of Black activism and the discontin- uities of white responses during the twentieth century. He suggests that the authority for poli- cing the color line moved away from mob vio- lence and toward state and local law enforcement as demonstrated by Governor Winthrop Rocke- feller’s mobilization of the National Guard to prevent whites from attacking Lance Watson and his fellow marchers in their 1969 walk against fear. A final group of authors consider nightrid- ing and forced labor as unique forms of coercion. Through careful research in Arkansas news- papers, Guy Lancaster documents the pervasive- ness of nightriding before and after the passage of Act 112 (a 1909 law intended to outlaw the practice). William Pruden III examines federal prosecutors’ attempts to punish night riders, con- cluding that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1906 Hodges case must be understood within the broader historical retreat from using Reconstruc- tion-era measures to protect Black rights. Michael Vinson Williams investigates the forced labor camps of levee workers after the 1927 flood and how the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People and the American Fed- eration of Labor attempted to improve labor conditions. Considered as a whole, these essays remind readers not only of the Elaine Massacre—one of the most horrific acts of racial violence in United States history—but also, crucially, of the intersec- tions of race, labor, and violence in the Delta in the decades before and after this devastating epi- sode. The book serves as a helpful introduction to the region’s rich labor history. It is also an in- spiration for others to continue investigating the events, organizations, and trends that either re- ceive glancing treatment, such as the Southern Tenant Farmers Union as mentioned in Michael Honey’s epigraph, or did not appear in these pages. The authors compellingly demonstrate the focusing power of a centennial. Each essay ex- amines strategies of oppression, and many au- thors find an indomitable spirit of resistance that not even the worst forms of violence could drive out of the Delta.

--Michael K. Rosenow

Jerome and Rohwer: Memories of Japanese American Internment in World War II Arkansas . Edited by Walter M. Imahara and David E. Meltzer. (Fayetteville, Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 2022. Pp. xxii + 228, foreword, preface, ac- knowledgments, introduction, ap- pendix, index. $29.95, hardcover)

The memories captured in this book are cru- cial ones to help us acknowledge and understand what really happened during the time of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Every person affected went through many of the same things—being informed by authorities in California after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that they would be sent away, having to live in temporary sites such as horse stalls at racetracks, taking a train trip across the country to get to camps (including the two in Arkansas), at- temptingattempting to make a home in tiny barracks— but they each experi- encedexperienced it in their own way. The accounts in the book are full of de- tails,details, big things and small things remem- beredremembered all these decades later. Taken together, they reveal the personal struggles of all the people af- fected—from realizing that, despite the fact that they had been told they were being held mostly to protect them from the surrounding populace, the guards’ guns were pointed at them, not away from them, to the daily humiliation of having to bathe and use the toilet without privacy. Histori- cal accounts can paint with a broad brush, but seeing these finer brushstrokes has real value in seeing the effects of conflicts and policies on real people living their daily lives.

Living in Arkansas myself and having done my own delving into the history of the Rohwer and Jerome camps, I appreciated the vivid de- scriptions by these Californians. James Ichinaga’s account of Jerome is as follows: “If I were ever in charge of punishing a group of people, this is the place I would send them. The environmental ele- ments were very hostile. It was hot and humid in the summer, freezing in winter. . . . I remember seeing those odd creatures called flying squirrels, bats, many species of birds, those wonderful in- sects called fireflies, and hearing the noisy croak- ing of the frogs at night. To this day I have never seen mosquitoes as huge as those in Arkansas” (p. 38). Captured also in the book are the diverse de- tails of what happened to people and families after they left the camps as the war was drawing to a close. Some returned to their homes and farms in California—although not without care- ful forethought. As Fran Inouye Imahara said, “My father wanted us to go to Japan to live after our release and applied for Japanese citizenship. Relatives advised us there would be nothing for us there. They canceled our request and we re- turned to Fresno in 1946. We were very fortunate to have a place to return to since a dear family friend, a policeman with the Fresno Police De- partment, looked after our home” (p. 54). Many were not so lucky and had nothing to return to; they made other plans, such as the Imaharas’ move to New Orleans, where they developed a thriving landscaping business (p. xviii). A few accounts have details that astounded me. Clover Johnson said, “While [his friend] Harry [Nagata] was in the service in the Midwest or on [the] East Coast, he encountered fellow sol- diers who had never seen anyone of Japanese an- cestry before. Someone in command decided it would be hard for the men to fight an enemy they’d never seen. Harry Nagata was ordered to dress up in the uniform of a Japanese soldier and parade in front of the troops so they could see and hate ‘the face of the enemy.’ Needless to say, that was a horrible thing to do to a loyal Ameri- can soldier and it breaks my heart every time I think about it” (p. 70). Another account, by Joh Sekiguchi, recalled a Boy Scout jamboree that in- cluded boys from Jerome and Rohwer as well as

boys from nearby Arkansas City—noting the dif- ferences in the boys’ food and supplies: “The scouts from the two relocation camps . . . were loaded into the back of supply trucks and rode into town. . . . I remember one boy [from Arkan- sas City] climbing in with the rest of us and I no- ticed other boys from town in the other trucks. It must have taken a lot of courage for them to join a bunch of complete strangers—especially strangers many folks considered to be ‘the enemy.’ Some of the boys from the relocation centers had brought their scout uniforms with them when they relocated, but none of the Ar- kansas City boys had uniforms” (p. 130). The Ar- kansas City boys also ate from one big pot of beans, while the camp boys had army-ration-style food trucked in from the camps, including des- sert. Finally, Tim Taira recalled learning years after the fact the circumstances surrounding a visit to Jerome by a group of Hawaiian soldiers, who gave candy and cookies to the kids. He later learned that this group had been from the 100th Battalion, training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, as part of the 442nd, the much decorated Japa- nese American regiment. As Taira said, “The ## Nisei [second-generation Japanese Americans] from Hawaii had not been interned and were a happy-go-lucky and gregarious bunch, quite dif- ferent temperamentally from the mainland Nisei. These differences were causing considerable fric- tion during training, so their CO had an idea. He sent busloads of the Hawaiians to Jerome. . . . En route to Jerome the group was cheerful and boisterous; during the return trip there was stunned silence. They were shocked to see the families of fellow trainees imprisoned behind barbed wire. They understood the situation now, and the friction between the two Nisei groups stopped” (p. 148). Acquiring and arranging all these accounts was a huge task and one that was done carefully and well. However, it is difficult to present a col- lection of oral histories in a cohesive manner, and that difficulty showed a bit in this book. The accounts have many common elements that can feel repetitive when reading cover to cover. The accounts are also arranged in alphabetical order by name, rather than by theme or location or chronology, which can leave the reader a bit off balance, encountering one new voice after another without always having a sense of how each story fits into the larger picture. Even the very beginning of the book sets up this scattered format, with a foreword written by three people, a preface by one editor (but not the other), and an introduction written by two people. Co-editor Walter Imahara’s account is in alphabetical order with the others, but I would have liked to have seen his story at the beginning, framing the other accounts and lending some cohesion. Overall, the book is a valuable collection of the voices of people who will soon be lost to time—although their stories will remain—and it will be a precious document in years to come to people doing research on family members and on the camps in Arkansas.

--Ali Welky

Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956. By John A. Kirk. (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2022. Pp. xi + 267, acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95, hardcover)

In 1953, Winthrop “Win” Rockefeller, a

third-generation member of one of America’s wealthiest and most powerful fam- ilies, moved to Petit Jean Mountain in Con- way County. He built a showplace Santa Ger- trudis cattle-farming op- eration, which he named Winrock farms. In 1991’s Agenda for Reform: Winthrop Rockefeller as Governor of Arkansas, 1967-71, historian Cathy Kunzinger Urwin analyzed his service as Arkan- sas’s Republican governor from 1967 to 1971, but his New York life has received little scholarly at- tention. Until now. John A. Kirk, who is George ## Washington Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), examines his formative earlier life experiences to develop a more complete and nu- anced portrait of the man. Based upon the Win- throp Rockefeller Collection, which is housed at the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Cul- ture, the Winthrop Rockefeller Papers at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), interviews and other sources, Kirk argues convincingly that his life in New York shaped his later career in Arkansas. Following a well-crafted introductory first chapter, the author devotes Chapters Two through Six to describing his childhood, educa- tion, and earlier career in the oil industry. Born on May 1, 1912 in Manhattan, Winthrop Rocke- feller was educated at the Lincoln School, a prac- tical learning-oriented institution, and the Loomis School, which was a traditional, college preparatory school. A poor student, he preferred the kind of “hands-on” learning, such as the les- sons in cattle-raising, he engaged in at Lincoln. Notably, he and his brothers Nelson and David received diagnoses of dyslexia much later in their lives. Much to his family’s disappointment, Win- throp’s poor academic performance resulted in his resignation from Yale University in 1934. Kirk refutes some Rockefeller family historians’ previous claims that an on-campus liaison led to his dismissal from Yale. To his family, his choice to enter the oil busi- ness helped make up for his lack of academic suc- cess. In 1934, he began learning each stage of the business by starting work as a roustabout laborer in Texas. He loved the experience—working in the field, the adventure, and the people. He inherited his family’s commitment to im- proving race relations. During his time in Hous- ton, Texas during the 1930s, he tried and failed to interest white leaders in establishing a com- munity health program for African Americans. Through the experience he gained “valuable in- sight into the difficulties in dealing with south- ern race relations” (p. 80). His oil career did not quite live up to his fam- ily’s expectations. Returning from the oil fields in 1937, he joined his father John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his brothers in the family’s New York City offices. In 1939, he began working in the foreign trade department of Socony Vacuum, a deriva- tive of his grandfather John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s Standard Oil Company. As someone who dis- liked working behind a desk, he struggled to find his place in an office. In Chapters Seven through Ten, Kirk details Winthrop’s army career during World War II, in- cluding his service in Guam, Leyte, and Oki- nawa. He distinguished himself in the field of battle, returning from the war a decorated com- bat veteran. While in the army, he became friends with Frank Newell. In the early 1950s, Newell, an insurance broker from Little Rock, showed him the property that became Winrock. For this reviewer, who was less familiar with the

full extent of Winthrop’s military career, this sec- tion was particularly informative. The final two chapters cover his first mar- riage to Barbara Paul “BoBo” Sears and his move to Arkansas. At the time of their marriage in 1948, she was pregnant with his only son, Win- throp Paul Rockefeller. Within eighteen months, the couple separated and became involved in a well-publicized, nasty, and drawn-out divorce, much to the embarrassment of Winthrop and his family. Their divorce was finalized in 1954. As Kirk has shown, his life was very much shaped by the “tension between seeking . . . to fulfill the high demands of being a member of the Rockefeller family . . . and . . . striving . . . to become his own person” (p. 6). Moving to Arkan- sas and building Winrock allowed him to con- tribute to his family’s legacy—in his own way. Kirk’s book is not hagiography. His subject emerges as a socially conscious, civically engaged, adventurous, courageous, and flawed individual. More than fifty years later, his legacy lives on in his adopted state. Thoroughly researched and en- gagingly written, From New Yorker to Arkansawyer should be essential reading for scholars of Arkan- sas’s late twentieth century political history.

--Melanie K. Welch

An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World. By Andrew N. Wegmann. (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. xvi + 238, acknowledgments, note on language, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95, paperback)

In the final chapter of his work, An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the At- lantic World, Andrew N. Wegmann references the prevalent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century no- tion that American society could not be shared between white and non-white Americans. De- spite this supposed incompatibility between the white and black com- munities, the New Or- leans mixed-race Creole people forged a path and identity for them- selves, embracing the ambiguous line between white and black, and in turn defining and rede- fining themselves as uniquely Creole within the changing American landscape. These are the people Wegman brings to the fore as he analyzes the origins and devel- opment of mixed-race middle-class Creoles in New Orleans—from their French origins in the 1730s through to their embrace of their Ameri- can home in the 1860s. For Wegmann, these Creoles underwent a process of Americanization in which they carefully crafted their cultural iden- tity over more than a century to promote eco- nomic and social uplift, as well as lay claim to a place uniquely theirs within New Orleans and greater American society. They were proud, edu- cated, ambitious middle-class people who con- stantly endeavored to promote their community’s growth and claim to status in a con- stantly shifting Atlantic World. In doing this, they understood race, race science, and racial am- biguity—manipulating these elements to their ad- vantage while also forming a sense of identity

and belonging in a changing American land- scape. In constructing his argument, Wegmann ad- dresses a historiographical record that, in his own words, has “complicated and simplified a massive antebellum population” (p. 3). In particular, Wegmann identifies Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without Masters as a landmark title that, while a substan- tive account on free blacks, overlooked the com- plexities of the Louisianan Creole population. In particular, he suggests Berlin’s work overstated and oversimplified the level of caste-subservience experienced by all free people of color—as well as removed these Louisianan mixed-race Creoles from the historical narrative of America. Con- sequently, the historiography since Berlin’s 1974 work has ignored these francophone peoples in studies of the South, instead incorporating them into Caribbean studies. This is the position Weg- mann argues against in An American Color. He as- serts that these New Orleans Creoles were very much a part of the narrative of American history and the greater Atlantic World; that they devel- oped within and because of greater worldly events; and that they shared many qualities with free mixed-race peoples in other parts of the American continent. In short, these New Or- leans Creoles raised their status, forged a unique identity, and positioned themselves socially bey- ond the parameters of Berlin’s conclusions. Weg- mann argues that these Creole people of New Orleans were just as “American” as other ele- ments of the country—and consequently, equally deserving of consideration within the greater his- torical narrative and history of the Atlantic ## World. Wegmann’s argument is divided among five chronological chapters in which he examines the New Orleans Creole community through signif- icant changes they experienced in the world around them and how they subsequently met those changes as a community. In chapter one, the origins of this community under French rule are explored. Significant to Wegmann’s analysis here is the fact that the Creole population of the nineteenth century had its roots in the conscious manipulation of race and power within the con- fines of French authority. For example, Weg- mann asserts that “free women of color during the colonial period utilized sex and race to carve out [a] niche in the socioracial order” (p. 12) when they chose to have relations with promi- nent Frenchmen. Combined with the French language lacking a word for a free person of color until 1774, the free mixed-race community under French rule was able to lay a substantive founda- tion for future generations. Following the transition to Spanish rule, chapter two describes how the Creole population continued to promote its own interests through a manipulation of the race science that accompa- nied Spanish rule. In particular, the Casta Sys- tem of racial hierarchy allowed middle-class Creoles to develop their identity and use their light skin and free heritage for social elevation. With the transition to United States authority, as seen in chapter three, the Creole community in New Orleans further embraced new cultural mores to further elevate its status. By embracing white culture and becoming propertied, New Or- leans Creoles were able to elevate and assert themselves as uniquely different. “To New Or- leans white society, [Creoles] were not colored, black, or negro. They were something else alto- gether . . . ” (p. 61). As the status of this Creole community climbed in the years following the War of 1812, it began imitating white American society by re- fining its middle class through avenues like fash- ion, family, and socializing. Like other free black communities across the country, in their own way, New Orleans Creoles were using class con-

sciousness and controlling the way they were per- ceived in society to improve their station and de- mand legitimacy within greater American society. Subsequently, Wegmann’s final chapter explores the ways in which the Creole community reacted to the American Colonization Society and repa- triation efforts during the nineteenth century. To this end, Wegmann explores the nuances that ex- isted between various mixed-race communities in different parts of the country and their motiva- tions to leave or stay. By the eve of the Civil War, New Orleans Creoles had undergone a process of Americanization, and saw their home not abroad in Africa, but locally, where they had grown and cultivated a uniquely American Creole culture for over a century. Through his analysis, Wegmann cogently ar- ticulates the nuanced history of New Orleans Creoles through over a century of political and social change. He situates the community within the greater narrative of United States history and the Atlantic World, and in so doing, recontextu- alizes important political and cultural historical developments. Wegmann has not only made a valuable contribution to the greater historiogra- phy of mixed-race communities in the United States, but also provided a social history that is applicable to a plurality of historical fields—from colonial to Antebellum America, and beyond to the greater history of the Atlantic World.

--Travis C. Perusich

Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. By Andy Horowitz. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020 Pp. 281, introduction, notes, acknowledgments, index. $36.00, hardcover)

Whether the author of this Barcraft Award winner intended to create irrefutable justification for the paradigm shift toward prioritizing vulner- able populations in emergency management, it appears he has done so while also adding a scan- dalous historical context that public officials can- not afford to ignore. Andy Horowitz illuminates the need for such drastic shifts, and their com- plex challenges, a century in the making with Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. It pulls no punches assessing Katrina’s aftermath, but also brings per- spective from the detrimental impacts of com- mercial dredging on Gulf Coast marshlands and broken promises to share the extracted wealth for a better future, all of which suffer in the name of disorganization, disaster opportunism, segrega- tion, and outright lies. Public policymakers, his- torians, and students can apply these assessments of both the good, but mostly the bad, lessons from Katrina. At times undeniably demoralizing, the writing seems designed to provoke meaning- ful change with an infuriating narrative that spurs its readers to action. In recounting one man’s protest dating back to New Orleans’ ill-begotten flood control plan of 1927, Horowitz personifies decades-long warn-

ings and bitter debates in disaster policy that seem to overlook the people most vulnerable to catastrophic change. “But four decades after the state engineers directed the Mississippi River to flood his house, the catastrophe was not yet over for him. Disasters can seem acute, his protests re- mind, but their causes are long in the making and their effects last a very long time” (p. 23). In another example, a familiar refrain, levee failure is attributed directly to cost-saving measures enacted over time by the Army Corp of Engi- neers. In a much less commonly understood parlance, however, the author goes on to pain- stakingly underscore years of indirect cause that arguably became too overwhelming for any gov- ernment agency or citizen group to overcome. Looking back over nearly a century of unfettered and unbalanced growth in the city, Horowitz un- derscores the vulnerability of certain geographic areas and populations in New Orleans from the underappreciated lens of culture and heritage. The early pages paint an intriguing picture for those unfamiliar with New Orleans’ political history. Even if one knows the Big Easy inti- mately, there are throughlines to discover that public officials and the social sciences grapple with today. A century of half-measures leaves New Orleans vulnerable to storm surge, and more than two centuries of racism and segrega- tion culminates in an irreparable relationship be- tween New Orleans and many of its African American citizens. These realities illustrate the political backdrop when Hurricane Katrina makes landfall. Calls to abandon certain parts of the city in the wake of the 2005 storm are echoed throughout, but the book also reminds us that New Orleans has been sinking for a hundred years as the result of dredging for transportation, and later oil. Readers may recall pleas to save the irreplaceable culture of New Orleans against calls to finally let the city slip into the gulf after Hur- ricane Katrina. What they may not remember are warnings from scientists thirty years prior of this inevitable result, which came alongside concerns from citizens that the city did not seem to be able to protect one area without flooding another. “Despite the concerns raised at the public hear- ing, the Army Corps announced in August 1975 that it would proceed with the project as de- signed” (p. 89). The author extends both practi- cal and cultural concerns from the paved streets into the swamp itself, linking the ecosystem as in- terdependent in regard to flood protections sur- rounding the city. “But in 2005, forty years later, a plodding bureaucracy and piecemeal federal ap- propriations process had left the hurricane pro- tection system unfinished” (p. 129). The inevitable storm surge floods wealthy and poor alike in neighborhoods borne of drained marsh, only for the segregation still upheld by tradition and economics to rear its ugly head during a recovery that is ongoing to this day. Unflooded low-income housing is de- nied occupancy so that it can be razed, and dis- placed citizens are outvoted regarding the future of New Orleans before they are allowed back into the city of their heritage. The underbelly of Lou- isiana politics is again brought front and center in a 1915 reboot for the modern era, and readers are pointedly reminded of what is at stake. “People died for no other reason than lack of or- ganization” (p. 124). If the history leading to this point is a sad reminder of how far we have come, the recounting of Katrina’s aftermath in this book is a gut-check for the wounds left to heal. In these pages, one sees many examples where unregulated progress and profit motive ig- nore intangible concepts like culture and tradi- tion. While it is hard to place monetary value on such things, to ignore them is to ignore the people they belong to, and, in many cases cov- ered here, to deceive them. “Public efficiency and

private profits were difficult to reconcile, because a totally efficient system of delivering public funds to individuals would have yielded no pri- vate profits at all” (p. 150). As with the flood water, the funding only seems to move from one place to another, never lifting all boats. The dis- regard for sustaining the culture of New Orleans, or more accurately the people who created it, is juxtaposed with not only the occurrence of dis- aster but our response to it. “As a process for change, tradition is the opposite of disaster, in which the present seems to arrive out of no- where” (p. 189). The main characters in this work are those who would stifle such tradition to further their own self-interests in both 1915 and in 2005. Katrina: A History, 1915-2015 does not let us forget this fact, and offers no glossy finish for the prejudices that often underpin such thought. Anyone wishing to effect change for dis- asters like Hurricane Katrina will find here the political realities, historical injustice, and all manner of obstacles they may face along the way.

--Jon Carvell

The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina. By Kai Erikson and Lori Peek. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2022. Pp. xv + 142, prelude, postlude, acknowledgments, notes, index. $32.14, paperback)

Sociologist Kai T. Erickson observed in 2014 that Hurricane Katrina would be the most telling storm of our era, not just because of the damage it inflicted upon people and property, but be- cause of what it revealed about our culture and ourselves. Social scientists were eager to learn more about the human costs of the disaster and went to work soon after the storm passed, sifting through reams of data, striving to make sense of it. Among this group were some of America’s best disaster researchers, their colleagues, and stu- dents who lent support. The best of this work ap- peared on The Katrina Bookshelf, the most comprehensive social science coverage of a dis- aster found anywhere in the literature. The Con- tinuing Storm is the capstone of this series. This book is a somber reflection, thoughtful, with a measured academic tone. Yet, simulta- neously, it is a brutally honest story of the abuse suffered by some of New Orleans’ most vulner- able citizens. It is a short, powerful read, essential for those who want to deeply understand what happened before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. At the center of the narrative are the poor, mostly Black residents of New Orleans, some eld- erly, handicapped, and medicine-dependent, stuck in Katrina’s path and unable to escape the storm’s wrath. They died in floodwaters that reached as high as their attics; they died swim- ming through toxic sludge, trying to find some- thing to hold on to as the water inched higher; they died on bridges and overpasses, waiting for help that was late in coming; some died in the filthy squalor of the Superdome and the Conven- tion Center, dehydrated, hungry and without medication. Those that survived were hastily loaded on buses or planes, headed for unknown destinations, separated from some of their family, and after a while living in a new place, feeling like utter outcasts in their new environment. For these souls, the hurricane is not over; it is a con- tinuing trauma. Wherever these survivors go, so goes Katrina. The book succeeds in reorienting our percep- tions of time and space as it relates to the hurri- cane. As humans, we like to corral nature into

specific, often short, timeframes. For exam- ple, as a meteorological event, Katrina was short-lived; it began on August 25 near south- east Florida and ended on August 29 over east Mississippi. The storm surge abated. The flood- waters in the geo- graphic bowl that is central New Orleans eventually receded. But human suffering will last a lifetime. Coastal towns like Venice, Buras, and Waveland were completely destroyed, having to build back from scratch. Memories of what was lost and the grief about those things have no official time stamp or expiration date. Regarding space, we like clear geographic boundaries that we can identify and point to on the map to remember those who suffered in that part of New Orleans, such as the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. But in the travels of those displaced from those places, Katrina lives on. Wrenched from their homes and made to feel unwelcome to return, Katrina followed them wherever their diaspora took them. Meanwhile, among New Orleans’ elite busi- ness crowd, there was jubilation as they witnessed the storm’s devastation. As affluent people living on higher ground, they suffered less damage and had the resources to get out of town as the storm passed. Surveying the flooding in the poorer, pri- marily Black district of New Orleans, some ex- pressed thanks to God for the “gift.” The storm did what they always wanted to do but could not. Their town’s “criminal element” had just boarded buses and was now gone. The city would gentrify and do all possible to make it nearly im- possible for the displaced to return. Possibly this slight was the lowest depth of humiliation for those in the diaspora, to be unwanted by their city. They were uprooted from their homes, treated like garbage, shuttled away, and barred from returning. The New Orleans business crowd wanted a smaller, taller, and whiter post- Katrina city, and they got all that. It may be true that no one reads Herbert Spencer anymore, as Talcott Parsons once wrote. But these business types wore their Social Darwinism on the sleeves of their freshly pressed suits. The “unfit” of their town had just been expelled. We learned from Katrina that Social Darwinism was stitched into the fabric of New Orleans and much of white America, which stood by silently watching. The Continuing Storm reveals the limits of a neo-liberal democratic state in the current age to protect its citizens after a disaster. In this pro-free market, pro-business way of governing, the re- sponsibility for disaster preparedness lies squarely on the shoulders of the individual family unit and local communities. Individual responsibility rules the day. The fittest will survive and the rest will fail. The federal government and state gov- ernments can help with infrastructure projects or resiliency initiatives and some limited forms of aid. Still, it is not their job to replace your home or to make you whole again. The political system insists that to receive substantial assistance, your local representatives must continually approach the halls of Congress, hat in hand, to beg for more relief money and prove that your district needs it—an exhausting, years-long process. Louisiana now encourages families to have an action plan before the next storm arrives in the Gulf. That plan involves adequate insurance, savings, a roadworthy car, a “go” kit to save time, and a place to meet family members during an evacuation. Unfortunately, many of the vulner- able poor in New Orleans lack access to these re- sources today just as they did in 2005.

--Stan Weeber