The Bridge to Gretna

It is the ugliest incident of the entire New Orleans debacle.

As the city descended into chaos and squalor in the days following the hurricane, 200 people from New Orleans -- mostly Black -- were told by police to cross the Greater New Orleans Bridge over the Mississippi River on foot. There, police told them, they would be met by buses to whisk them away to shelter and aid.

Here's who met them instead: a phalanx of sheriffs from the neighboring white suburb of Gretna, guns drawn.

The incident was reported by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, two white tourists from San Francisco who also happened to be emergency medical services workers attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck:

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.

As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation... We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge... They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

To make matters worse, after they had retreated down the bridge and set up camp, the Gretna authorities pursued them:

Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw "mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

On CNN, Larry Bradshaw quoted the Gretna sheriff as saying:

"If we let these people in, our city would look just like New Orleans: burned, looted and pillaged.”

Through the interview with Slonsky and Bradshaw, CNN's Anderson Cooper seemed incredulous. But the Gretna Chief of Police, Arthur Lawson, confirmed as much in his interview:

"Our city was locked down and secured for the sake of the citizens that left their valuables to be protected by us. Our borders were closed for the safety of our citizens and their property."

There you have it, the American sickness laid bare. Property over life. Especially when those lives are of people who don't own property. Especially when those lives are of desperate Black folks made so by centuries of white fear.

Not since the Boston school busing crisis of 1975 has there been a more graphic display of racial turf war in the United States. Usually, the urban/suburban tension is played out one arrest at a time, wherever Black folks stray into white territory: a car stopped here, a pedestrian arrested there. But it's all just a miniature version of the Great Primal Fear: Black people marching en masse into the suburbs. Here in New Orleans was the ultimate white fear played out in real life.

For anyone who claims that there were no "racial aspects" to the New Orleans tragedy, this makes those racial underpinnings explicit. All the cute little media catchphrases like "playing the race card" are just verbal exercises in denial anyway. The presence of race as a factor in American events is something that should never need proving. Want to know why the electoral map looks the way it does on election day? Race. Want to know why Americans have a gun obsession? Race. Want to know why America has such incredible economic inequities? Race.

Race isn't a blemish on our nation's history; race defines our history. Race isn't an "aspect"; it is the canvas on which our history is painted.

It is the story behind every story.