Excerpt: These Streets Are Ours

Ebony Bolding and Ashley Nelson are two of six students at New Orleans' John McDonough Senior High who participated in The Neighborhood Story Project, a writing program that documents and celebrates life in New Orleans -- the good, the bad and everything in between -- prior to Hurricane Katrina.

In Before and After North Dorgenois, Ebony Bolding examines life in the city's Sixth Ward. She reflects on the impact the media had on her community and talks to her neighbors on North Dorgenois Street about their lives and future hopes. In The Combination, Ashley Nelson paints a nuanced portrait of Lafitte, one of downtown New Orleans' oldest public-housing complexes.

Ashley Nelson recently returned to New Orleans and now works for the Neighborhood Story Project. Ebony Bolding has resettled in Houston, Tex., with her mother.

"Twisted Our Words" from Before and After North Dorgenois.

It all started in April 2003. Head was shot at the corner of North Miro and Dumaine. People said that Caveman did it, but who knows, you can't always listen to what the people say. People thought that Caveman killed Head because both of them had had a little beef, but the rumor was that they later on forgot about it and forgave each other.

A week later Caveman was shot in the John McDonough gym. I wasn't there and didn't see it, so I don't know how it happened. I was sitting by the gate at my high school, Clark, during the lunch break, when an undercover cop rolled up and told us to move from by the gate because they just had a shooting at John Mac and someone had been killed. I was hoping that it wasn't anybody that I knew. I rode the Broad bus home with my friend Brittany, and she came with me to my house.

By the time we got to my house most of the television crews had gone away, but there were still many policemen in the area. We were sitting on my porch just a half a block from the school when a white man with a notebook came up to us and started asking us did we know Caveman and Head. He was asking me about Head, because he knew we both went to Clark. Not realizing he was a newspaper reporter, we commented on what he had asked us, but it wasn't too much. He kept asking us if we liked Head and we didn't say anything bad because we really didn't know him that well. The truth was that I would see Caveman every time that I went by my Grandfather's house on Dumaine Street in the Fifth Ward. As for Head, I used to see him at school. I didn't have anything against either one of them. To me, they were cool people.

The next day they had a big write-up about the killing that included quotes from myself and Brittany. I couldn't believe how he twisted our words around. The reporter made it like we didn't like Head and Caveman. It was a big mess, and the reporter made more drama.

After the shooting, John Mac had got a bad name. Stories about the shooting stayed on the news for weeks and weeks, a big beef grew between the Fifth and Sixth wards, and Brittany and I were caught in between. People kept asking me, 'Why you said that about that boy, why you said this?' I would just tell them to mind their business, because everything you read in the newspaper is not true. The conflict got to the point that people were telling me that I should watch out, that people were going to do me something. My mom got worried about me, and Brittany's mom got worried about her, so they pulled us out of school for the rest of the semester.

The next year, Clark wouldn't let me back in because they said I wasn't in the district anymore because they had moved downtown. What I couldn't understand was how come when Clark was uptown I was in the district but now that it's downtown where I live I'm not in the district. When I switched schools I really didn't want to go to John Mac but I didn't have a choice. I was feeling nervous the day before school. I was saying to myself, 'People not gonna like me,' which didn't make a lot of sense because I already knew a lot of people that went there from middle school. I also thought there might be more drama over the newspaper article since Caveman got shot in the gym.