In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast as one of the worst storms in U.S. history. The Category Three hurricane killed 1,833 Americans across five states and caused an estimated $108 billion in property damage. It also laid bare the deep impacts of decades of segregation and institutionalized racism in the South.
The brunt of the devastation fell on the region’s low-income and minority residents, many of whom remain displaced to this day. In New Orleans, for instance, heavily African-American neighborhoods, such as the flood-prone Lower Ninth Ward, were wiped out while affluent white neighborhoods further inland were spared.
Many progressives hoped that the gross inequities exposed by Katrina would spur broad national action on racial equity, but progress has been disappointingly slow. An April 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 76 percent of black Americans say they’ve experienced discrimination or unfair treatment. And a stunning 58 percent of Americans think race relations are “generally bad”—with 69 percent think things are getting worse.
For former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the lessons of Katrina remain unfinished business that the nation needs to tackle.