ColorOfChange Blog | Our February Series: Katrina and the birth of ColorOfChange

9.2.12

ColorOfChange Blog | Our February Series: Katrina and the birth of ColorOfChange: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in August and September of 2005, upending the lives of 1.5 million people and putting Black folks' lack of political and social power front and center for all the world to see.

The storms magnified racial disparities in the U.S., and no place demonstrated this more clearly than New Orleans, where 80% of the city was submerged after Katrina.

When Katrina touched land on August 29, more than a third of all Black New Orleanians were living in poverty. As we know well from the televised accounts, these impoverished and largely Black neighborhoods bore the brunt of the disaster. And the lack of access to resources was one major reason why folks couldn't simply leave when they got news of the coming storm.