This article is based on a keynote presentation delivered at the Alabama Poverty Project Lifetime of Learning Summit at the University of Montevallo on September 30, 2011. Conference organizers asked for the perspective of a survivor of a significant natural disaster, for information regarding Louisiana's recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita…

Nearly all young people in the United States aspire to a college degree, but many fail to complete college in a timely manner. Does this lack of attainment reflect abandoned college plans? I analyze mixed-methods data from a five-year study of 700 low-income mothers at two Louisiana community colleges. Hurricane Katrina displaced respondents and…

Theory and evidence on disaster-induced population displacement have focused on individual and population-subgroup characteristics. Less is known about impacts on households. I estimate excess incidence of household breakup resulting from Hurricane Katrina by comparing a probability sample of pre-Katrina New Orleans resident adult household heads…

The reopening of the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina on Monday Night Football dramatized problematic rhetorical, visual, and spatial norms of purification rituals bound up in what Burke calls the paradox of purity. Hurricane Katrina was significant as a visually traumatic event in large part because it signified the ghetto as a…

It was heartwarming to see so many states, school districts, and communities throughout the United States open their doors to the children of Katrina. This response was a graphic portrayal of the spirit of volunteerism, the value of the more able assisting the less fortunate, and the sense of altruism that surfaces when major crises occur.…

Many people are invisible within and to the wider society. An adjunct aspect of that situation is that the marginalized are also invisible to one another. This "mutual invisibility" undermines the possibilities of cooperative transcommunal alliances. It is Cedric Sunray's ("Similarities between Tribes and the Ninth Ward,"…

Long before Katrina, the South functioned in the social imaginary to contain racism and poverty, and the Mason-Dixon acts then in the national imagination as a buffer to safeguard the nation from the taint of such undemocratic realities. More and more, in many countries of America, a system known as "neoliberalism" prevails; based on a…

In this article, the author talks about the disaster in the United States that reignited a debate about poverty and the responsibility of government--and government schools--that had never really gone away in the first place. Hurricane Katrina was one of the biggest natural disasters in the U.S. that swept through four states, killed more than…

The emotional trauma of recent events may never go away. A million people were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina, including an estimated 372,000 children of school age. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas-Louisiana coastline, forcing thousands more to evacuate. Acute symptoms of trauma range from confusion, nightmares, and…

After a state take-over of most local schools, the fate of public education in New Orleans has been clouded by uncertainty. However, many problems are already clear. The community has expressed outrage on numerous occasions about the management, conditions, policies, and practices of the RSD schools. One fundamental concern has been about the lack…

Hurricane Katrina resulted in a disaster of proportions not previously known in the United States. The traumatic experiences of children and families during Hurricane Katrina, the flooding that resulted from the breach of the levees, the evacuation, and the aftermath are unprecedented. In responding to the enormous mental health needs of children…

To get some notion of how deeply scholars have been affected by Hurricane Katrina, one might look to someone like Dr. Erma Lawson, a medical sociologist from the University of North Texas. Lawson, who has coordinated the assistance efforts for the Association of Black Sociologists, has not hesitated to call on colleagues, graduate students, civil…

Long before the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina or the chaos of evacuation, New Orleans' social infrastructure was failing. News coverage of the overcrowded Superdome and the city's flooded streets exposed the poverty and vulnerability of many residents, especially African Americans. As New Orleans begins to rebuild, can the city avoid the mistakes…