No Justice for the African-Americans Targeted by White Vigilantes After the Katrina Flooding

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted December 20, 2008.

AC: I would hope that this story -- and some of the news coverage from the time period -- would generate some introspection, would cause people to scrutinize the value systems put vividly on display by the catastrophe. For example, the decision by certain law-enforcement officials to bar New Orleanians from leaving the city and walking over the Crescent City Connection bridge into Gretna, which is the next town over.

You have to wonder about people's priorities. It was pretty shocking to me to hear about an entire neighborhood trying to wall itself off from flood victims, trying to become an ad hoc gated community, which is what happened in Algiers Point.

At the same time, they're were some really heroic and selfless things that went on during that time period, as well. There were many people who lost everything and risked losing their lives to help people. Donnell Herrington, who was shot in Algiers Point several days after Katrina made landfall, is one of those people. When the storm hit, he was sitting in his grandparents' apartment in the St. Bernard Housing Project. That area was deluged with water, and Herrington went out and got a skiff and rescued people who were facing drowning. He delivered them to a highway overpass out of the water. He says he felt "compelled" to try to save folks.

LS: Are you still working on the story?

AT: I'd encourage anyone who has any information about the vigilante activities or the murder of Henry Glover -- or anyone else -- to contact me. I'm still pursuing the story. I expect to publish some follow-up stories soon, and this body of reporting may well become a book or film.

***

Katrina's Hidden Race War

By A.C. Thompson, The Nation.

A.C. Thompson's reporting on New Orleans was directed and underwritten by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. ProPublica provided additional support, as did the Center for Investigative Reporting and New America Media.

The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.

It was September 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. "I just hit the ground. I didn't even know what happened," recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.

The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington's companions--his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. "I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck," Alexander recalls. "I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again." Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander's back, arm and buttocks.

Herrington shouted at the other men to run and turned to face his attackers: three armed white males. Herrington says he hadn't even seen the men or their weapons before the shooting began. As Alexander and Collins fled, Herrington ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his throat. Behind him, he says, the gunmen yelled, "Get him! Get that nigger!"

The attack occurred in Algiers Point. The Point, as locals call it, is a neighborhood within a neighborhood, a small cluster of ornate, immaculately maintained 150-year-old houses within the larger Algiers district. A nationally recognized historic area, Algiers Point is largely white, while the rest of Algiers is predominantly black. It's a "white enclave" whose residents have "a kind of siege mentality," says Tulane University historian Lance Hill, noting that some white New Orleanians "think of themselves as an oppressed minority."

A wide street lined with towering trees, Opelousas Avenue marks the dividing line between Algiers Point and greater Algiers, and the difference in wealth between the two areas is immediately noticeable. "On one side of Opelousas it's 'hood, on the other side it's suburbs," says one local. "The two sides are totally opposite, like muddy and clean."

Algiers Point has always been somewhat isolated: it's perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River, linked to the core of the city only by a ferry line and twin gray steel bridges. When the hurricane descended on Louisiana, Algiers Point got off relatively easy. While wide swaths of New Orleans were deluged, the levees ringing Algiers Point withstood the Mississippi's surging currents, preventing flooding; most homes and businesses in the area survived intact. As word spread that the area was dry, desperate people began heading toward the west bank, some walking over bridges, others traveling by boat. The National Guard soon designated the Algiers Point ferry landing an official evacuation site. Rescuers from the Coast Guard and other agencies brought flood victims to the ferry terminal, where soldiers loaded them onto buses headed for Texas.

See more stories tagged with: violence, race, new orleans, african americans, murder, algiers point, vigilantes

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

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