It had been 20 months since I had been in New Orleans. My scheduled trip for September 2005 was interrupted by that little ole storm that rolled through town the month before. And it seemed amazing that it took this long for me to arrive back at the scene of the crimes.

Shortly after the disaster, I contacted several Orleanians about how CDS could help. A couple of youngish theater folks, Nick Slie and Bruce France, whose company, Mondo Bizarro, was active in the AlternateRoots network, had jumped into the fray of post-Katrina documentation with a website, i10witness.org. We sent some audio gear down to assist them, and their efforts expanded to several hundred audio interviews which are shared on the site.

Our ongoing discussions led us to consider a mapping project somewhere in the city, and after some fundraising, and scheduling dances, we finally made our way to the Central City nieghborhood. In the Jim Crow era, the nieghborhood along Dryades Street, now Oretha Castle Haley, was the heart of the commercial community for the African American community. By the 80s the neighborhood had declined, and had become more associated with high crime and murder rate, but in the past decade many cultural organizations chose to locate there, and folks have seen the potential for resurrecting the community. Post-katrina, Central City’s high ground was particularly viewed as useful in the larger redevelopment plan, so the choice of building a community tour here seemed particularly appropriate.


Writer, performer and community leader John O’Neal

On March 19, Nick, Bruce, photographer Zack Smith, and videographer Rebecca Snedeker, and I accompanied a group of 10 local residents and people who had been doing community service after the storm in the area, in a stroll around the neighborhood to record stories about place. The initial results of our efforts was a series of seven stories posted in draft form on Storymapping.

Hearing the stories excited me about the possibilities of the direction of this work, and we plan to assist with the ongoing work of building this online and street level tour of Central City.