Above: Photo of the photos by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice
Monday, August 29, 2005, at 6:10 a.m. marked the start of a moment that would be forever etched in history. Category 3 Hurricane Katrina had just made landfall on New Orleans, and the city would never be the same. Its aftereffects wiped out more than 80 percent of the city’s infrastructure.
The same streets where children played and brass bands once marched were unrecognizable, submerged in water. Homes, history, and culture vanished, erasing the soul of the predominantly Black city, similar to that of Oscarville. In parts of the city, water climbed 18 feet high, taking more than 1,300 lives.
Millions across the region learned through television, word of mouth, or firsthand experience that the homes and safe havens they once knew were gone. An estimated 1.2 million people evacuated from New Orleans during Katrina.
Among the cities people fled to, Atlanta was high on the list. Its historical Black presence and southern culture made it a natural choice for many New Orleans natives. Nearly two decades later, many of these natives still call Atlanta home. However, the path that brought them here is unique to each person.
“The pictures can give you some sense, but being there is actually different,” said Cheryl Corley, an NPR reporter who covered the aftermath of Katrina in September 2005. “I don’t know if I could compare that to anything I’ve gone through—tornadoes and the destruction of tornadoes, other floods, and even much smaller floods. But this was eerie because you saw all of this destruction all over the place, and there was just a lack of people.”
Months after Katrina, many people from New Orleans went without governmental support. “It took a while for all of those things to happen,” said Corley.
In remembrance of the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, The Atlanta Voice sat down with New Orleanians who made Atlanta a home away from home.
Troy Lewis, Age During Katrina: 35, 9th Ward
A Saints hat on his head, a Saints t-shirt on his back, black pants on his legs, and a pair of sneakers on his feet. That was Troy Lewis’ attire when he arrived in Atlanta in 2005.
“Of course, you all in Atlanta gave me a warm welcome,” laughed Lewis, reflecting on how he was suited head to toe in the gear of the Atlanta Falcons’ arch rival.
Despite the light-heartedness he shows today, the reality is that the Saints gear on his back was the only possession he had when he got to Atlanta. At the time, evacuees like Lewis were often referred to as “refugees,” a term that felt heavy for someone still in his own country.
Lewis initially didn’t take Katrina seriously. He had grown up in New Orleans, and hurricane warnings seemed like a regular occurrence.
“We were going to try to stick it out because a lot of times hurricanes don’t hit New Orleans too hard,” he said.
But as he watched his older next-door neighbors evacuate, he grew more cautious. “They were leaving, and they normally don’t leave, so I figured we should get out of here.”
Lewis gathered his wife and two daughters, ages eight and six, and the four of them made their way west toward Metro Atlanta to stay with his wife’s friend.
In the days that followed, Lewis watched Katrina unfold in his hometown.
“It’s not like today, so communication was not easy,” he said. “We went a good little while, maybe a couple of weeks, not really knowing where most of our family was.”
The more news and footage he saw, the more he realized he would be in Atlanta for a while.
“It was like sixteen of us living in a three-bedroom house,” he said, as his family relied on neighbors and community donations to make ends meet.
When he returned to his home in St. Bernard Parish in October 2005, it was clear that everything had changed.
“This looked like the end of the world,” Lewis said, reflecting on his drive through New Orleans and St. Bernard. “You could see the gray flood lines at the top of houses where the water had risen.”
With banks shut down and all of his possessions, clothes, vehicles, and keepsakes lost, Lewis realized he would be rebuilding his life from scratch.
“If you ever felt the feeling of being homeless, that’s what it felt like,” he said.
Two decades later, Lewis still calls metro Atlanta home.
“I love it here… can’t get me out of here now,” he laughed.
The Duncan Family
After Katrina, the Duncan family evacuated from New Orleans and came to Atlanta.
Eddie Duncan, Age During Katrina: 35, Home: 6th Ward
“The strangest thing happened. It was like days before it came, it got quiet out there, like everything just—you see, no birds flying around, no chirping or nothing. It’s like they knew,” said Eddie Duncan with a tremor in his voice as he recalls the days leading up to Katrina.
Eddie had a decision to make. Watching television and seeing various news outlets warn residents of New Orleans to evacuate, he began to realize this storm wasn’t like any other he had experienced in his 35 years living in New Orleans. But for Eddie and his family of five, he felt like he would be left with no choice but to stay.
“We were almost going to stay because the transportation that we had wasn’t that reliable,” said Eddie. This would leave him, his three children, all under the age of ten, and his wife to tough through the toll Katrina was bound to take.
At the last minute, his mother called and told him to take her car, as she had evacuated days earlier. Taking her car, Eddie and his family made their way to Jackson, Mississippi. Initially, he thought they would be gone for just a couple of days.
Days after the storm hit New Orleans, Eddie had electricity back in Jackson. Watching TV, he realized Katrina was unlike anything anyone had experienced before.
Even today, when he hears of storms headed towards Georgia, he gets slightly triggered. “Just the thought of it, that it may be coming this way.”
After about three days in Jackson, Eddie and his family drove to Atlanta to stay with a family friend.
“We were just running around a lot those few days,” said Eddie.
With his home in New Orleans destroyed, his two children displaced from elementary school, and a toddler to care for, one would expect a sense of anxiety to take over Eddie.
“I wasn’t stressed. I just knew it was gonna be cool,” he said in the calmest tone with a slight smirk. “You can’t show no stress when you got kids, then they gonna feel it.”
The thought of going back and rebuilding in New Orleans initially crossed Eddie’s mind, “but it wasn’t about me.” With a school system struggling to rebuild, his decision was more about the betterment of his children. “The schools never came back up the way they need to be, still to this day,” said Eddie.
At 55 years old, Eddie still resides in Metro Atlanta. Two of his children have graduated from college, and another serves in the military.
They all turned out great to me. I’m proud of them,” he said.
Kayla Duncan, Age During Katrina: 10, Home: 7th & 9th Ward
“Oh, this is fun, we’re getting a break from school,” is what went through the mind of 10-year-old Kayla Duncan in August 2005 as she sat in a cramped two-bedroom apartment of a relative’s house with her two siblings and parents in Jackson, Mississippi.
Jackson was the first place Kayla and her family evacuated to when word broke that Katrina was headed to New Orleans. Having lived in New Orleans her whole life, she thought it would be like any other storm passing through. Her family didn’t evacuate until the last minute.
Katrina hit New Orleans on Monday, August 29, 2005, but on Friday, August 26, Kayla remembered, “We were outside playing in the street.”
The next day, the family evacuated.
It wasn’t until days after Katrina hit that Kayla truly grasped what had happened. Dealing with Mississippi’s own destruction from Katrina, Kayla and her family didn’t have power to watch television to see what was going on back home.
“And then when the power came back on, after it being off for a couple days, we turn on the TV and New Orleans is underwater,” said Kayla. At 10 years old, she was too young to fully grasp how this event would forever change her childhood, but old enough to know it was serious.
Just two weeks into her last year of elementary school, Kayla and her family were uprooted over 400 miles across the south to Atlanta to stay with her cousin, a city she knew nothing about except that her cousin lived there.
Living with her aunt and uncle, who was an attorney in an affluent neighborhood in Gwinnett County, Kayla described it as a “culture shock” when she first attended school in Atlanta. She went from attending school in the 7th and 9th Wards of New Orleans, where she was among a class full of Black students, to being the only Black student in her suburban class in Atlanta.
“We had really young parents who weren’t really financially stable,” said Kayla. She recalled her family going to Goodwill to find clothes after all of them were lost in Katrina.
“And I remember it was like two pairs of shoes and maybe six or seven outfits that I would wear on rotation. So kids were kind of picking on me because of that.”
Kayla arrived in Atlanta in 2005 and never left. She finished high school at South Gwinnett High School, earned her degree from Georgia State, and, nearly 20 years later, still calls metro Atlanta home.
Her love for New Orleans is still there and comes out when she visits, but Kayla admits, “The city has just never been the same.”
Alicia Duncan, Age During Katrina: 3, Home: 7th & 9th Ward
The Saints shirt Alicia Duncan wears with pride might throw you off at first. She grew up in Atlanta nearly her whole life. Atlanta is where she learned to drive, went to her high school prom, and performed in her first fifth-grade play. Atlanta is home.
But the life she knows now could have been completely different.
She was three years old when her parents and two older siblings fled New Orleans because of Katrina. Most of her memories from that time are hazy, but one moment stands out.
“I remember we were all gathered around this really small TV in Mississippi, watching the news coverage. I remember distinctly,” she said. “There was a newscaster on TV, and he was literally getting blown away by the winds.”
Over the next few days and weeks, she went with her family from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, and then to Atlanta. She didn’t really understand the stress her parents and siblings were under.
“I was just a baby,” she said.
As Alicia got older, listening to her siblings and relatives share their anecdotes about Katrina brought a deep sadness. Watching archival news footage of New Orleans flooded and stripped of life, she said, “It’s really sickening and disheartening to see how America treated the city.”
Even now, at 23, when she hears her dad retell how he led their family of five through the evacuation, her face still shows shock and sadness. “I wish I kind of got the experience of childhood in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina,” she said.
There are pieces of childhood Alicia never got, like being close to her cousins and relatives, many of whom were scattered across the country after Katrina.
Thomas Dean, Age: 35, Home: 9th Ward
Sitting in a Belmont Hilton lobby, where he and his family were staying to take shelter from Katrina, Thomas Dean thought to himself, “We going back home soon, right?” as he watched the news on TV. Usually, when he and his family evacuated to Beaumont for hurricane warnings, it was only for a day or two, but this time felt different.
Moments later, the reporters on the news made a statement that left Dean and many others in the lobby in shock.
“We were watching the news, and they said, well, this is a direct hit. Make plans to stay wherever you are in the country. We’re not going to open the city back up for residents to come back home for 90 days,” said Dean, reflecting on the day in late August 2005.
“Our eyes and mouths were wide open. We were like, 90 days? What the hell we gonna do for 90 days?”
Dean, his family, and a couple of friends began brainstorming on a long-term place to stay. “It was between Dallas and Atlanta.”
So they embarked on an 18-hour trip to Atlanta. For Dean, he really didn’t expect the stay to be long. He thought in a couple of months, he would return to running his flooring business back home and go back to normal.
His house sat in the Garden District of New Orleans, an area not usually prone to flooding. He even got word from his Uncle Cyril, who had stayed through the storm, that the house was fine immediately after Katrina.
“Bo, your house is good. I’m standing in front of your house. Your work van is not underwater,” said Uncle Cyril.
However, as the day passed, he received another call from his uncle.
“I heard an explosion,” Dean remembers his Uncle Cyril saying. “Man, something strange happened. Now they’re talking about levees breaking, the water’s rising. I got to get out of here.”
When Dean returned to New Orleans a few months after Katrina, much of what he knew was gone.
“So as you were driving down the street, reading these damn Xs on these houses, it was very telling,” said Dean.
Dean grew frustrated with the government’s lack of urgency in rebuilding the city.
“Bush was in office. They didn’t care about other Black folk. So I got mad.”
That anger eventually led him to decide to keep his family in Metro Atlanta. Dean admits his adjustment wasn’t as hard as it was for many others. A family in Stone Mountain allowed him and his family to live in a five-bedroom rental rent-free for a year while they saved up.
During that time, Dean and his wife saved enough to purchase a new home a little over a year after Katrina.
Nearly two decades later, Dean still lives in Metro Atlanta and is a successful business owner. He owns Premier Flooring Group, one of the very few Black-owned flooring companies in the area.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have some success in business,” he said.
Although New Orleans will always live in Dean’s heart, he admits that moving to Atlanta opened his eyes in ways he hadn’t experienced before.
“You know, I’ve met more millionaires in person since I’ve lived here than I ever had in my whole life,” Dean said.
