Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is reflecting on Hurricane Katrina 20 years after the natural disaster hit the city.
Nagin took to the pulpit at Household of Faith Church in Harvey to discuss the city’s handling of displaced residents in the storm. He recalled the days-long evacuation and the challenges they faced to get everyone out, stating that he would tell the “truth” about the situation. According to WDSU, the Church posted his speech to Facebook.
“So I’m gonna tell y’all some truth today. All these documentaries and all these interviews and people that weren’t here telling the
story. We ain’t having that, but let me get to it,” explained Nagin. “This is my first time speaking in probably over a decade. After all this happened, God told me to be Quiet and just wait.”He recounted the city’s success in jobs and entertainment before Katrina hit. He began to tear up as he recalled his own testimony about his experience leading the city in the midst of the storm’s impact.
“It was the largest mass evacuation in t
he history of this country, and it still is the largest mass evacuation in the history of this country,” he stated. “When I went up [in a helicopter], it brought me to tears to see the city and the region so devastated. Water was everywhere. There were people on roofs crying for help… Some of them were being rescued, but it was just so many of them.”He added, “The buses started to come. People started to be evacuated, but it took seven days. They can send an aircraft carrier around the world in a couple of days. It took seven days for the last person to be evacuated from the Convention Center.”
He also addressed his controversial
“Chocolate City” speech. He emphasized that New Orleans would remain a predominantly Black city even post-Katrina.“We kept working, and then Martin Luther King’s birthday came up, and I gave a speech on the steps of City Hall,” he detailed. “The Chocolate City speech, and let me tell you, them folks lost their mind. They couldn’t believe I would say that New Orleans would be a Chocolate City again. It had been that from the beginning.”
Nagin was initially commended for his efforts to get assistance for displaced New Orleans residents. However, his tenure later became entangled in a city corruption scandal. The controversy resulted in a 10-year prison stint for wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering.
Nagin stepped away from the spotlight for decades following his political decline. However, he has since returned for the anniversary of Katrina to emphasize the city and its people’s resilience.
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