By Jacki Raithel
August 2009
In 1965, water from Hurricane Betsy overflowed the levees in New Orleans, flooding the Lower Ninth Ward, killing 76 people, and causing more than $1 billion in damages.
In 2005, flooding from Hurricane Katrina overflowed the levees in the city once again, killing more than 1,800 people, costing upward of $100 billion, and forcing New Orleans native Juliette Jeanfreau to spend part of her senior year of high school living in Texas while her mom and brother returned home to repair a house that had suffered serious damage.
Four years later, Westhampton College Dean, Juliette Landphair, enlisted the help of Jeanfreau to research Hurricane Betsy, the Lower Ninth Ward, disaster politics and the ways in which this story has been built into the narrative of the Ninth Ward and New Orleans in general.
Both Landphair and Jeanfreau, a Jepson senior, grew up in New Orleans and both were told to never venture into the Ninth Ward. Now, both have invested their time studying the Ninth Ward – a neighborhood with a history of race and class marginalization, high crime rates and a strong sense of community.
“It’s a weird tension between community and crime,” Landphair said. “And it makes them mad. … The story of Betsy is the opportunity to tell the story of people that feel like no one’s listening. They call themselves the forgotten people of the city. Well, not anymore.”
Landphair, who studied the history of the Ninth Ward for her graduate thesis, said she had wanted to write a book about Hurricane Betsy for many years, but hasn’t had the time. Jeanfreau’s research is perhaps the beginning of that, but most likely will be published as a scholarly article.
“It’s cool to learn about where I live,” Jeanfreau said. “There are things about New Orleans that I didn’t realize until I left.”
Most of Jeanfreau’s research has been through primary documents such as news clippings, censuses, reports from the army corps of engineers. The neglect of of the Ninth Ward came into the spot light after Hurricane Katrina, but still, hardly any research has been done about Hurricane Betsy or the history of the Ninth Ward.
In July, Landphair and Jeanfreau traveled to New Orleans to track down materials that are only available in New Orleans and to gather oral histories of the people of the Ninth Ward. Their goal was to find about 10 people who had lived through both hurricanes. Landphair predicted that many people’s stories would be similar – themes of marginalization and hardship.
Jeanfreau, whose passion for the city had increased through her research, said that although she may a detour through divinity school after graduating from Richmond, she hoped to return to New Orleans.
“I’d like to go back and help rebuild,” she said, “but I haven’t figured out how to best serve.”
