How We Came Back: Voices from Post-Katrina New Orleans by Virgil Henry Storr

Author:Virgil Henry Storr [Storr, Virgil Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EDWARD

Edward, an 80-year-old African American man with some Native American ancestry, was born in Slidell, Louisiana, but has lived in Pontchartrain Park, a subdivision in the Gentilly area of New Orleans, for 50 years. Before the storm, he owned and serviced vending machines.

[This land] used to be a swamp, and some land developer bought the land and developed it into lots, and they built houses here. They built a subdivision. They were building these houses for middle-class people.22I tried to buy a house here, and I couldn’t buy a house. They said I was too young. I must have been about 19 or 20. I was too young. So I saw a sign on this lot: “For sale, by owner.” I called a man. He wanted $5,000. I said, “Man, I got the money right now.” I bought the lot. Then we had the house built, my wife and I. We had two children at the time. Then we had a total of four children.

When I moved into here I had a truck and I was a furniture mover. I did that for 23 years before I quit that. [When we moved here] discrimination was so bad. All they wanted back here was doctors, schoolteachers, lawyers, and postal employees. And then here come an old truck driver.

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