Lessons from the Past

After another long day at work, I came home to an excellent dinner that Brandon had prepared (meatloaf, scalloped potatoes and collard greens) and we watched an interesting documentary about the neighborhood in which he resides. The documentary is "Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans".

The Treme is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and from the start it represented one of the most unique living situations in the country. Populated with a mix of free blacks, whites and an array of other recent immigrants, the Treme became a daring social experiment, as it was fully integrated while slavery was still legal in the US. Home of the nation's first black newspaper, the residents of the Treme pushed for equal rights for all citizens of the nation, and made progress in the late 1800's that was not seen again until the 1960's.

Filled with lots of photos, character studies and interviews with a collection of long-time residents, the film shows the rise and fall of the Treme, and shows how Supreme Court decisions like Plessy vs. Ferguson and the construction of I-10 on Claiborne Street effectively dismantled the neighborhood and resegregrated the population that had worked so diligently to move the city and the country in the direction that the Founding Fathers originally envisioned. The filmed was edited after Hurricane Katrina, and shows heartbreaking pictures of the damage the neighborhood sustained from the storm.

Currently, the city planning commission is exploring an idea to dismantle I-10 in an attempt to re gentrify the neighborhood. It's going to take a lot of work to get the area back into shape, but I hope for the sake of the Treme and its residents the plan moves forward. I love walking around this neighborhood, but it's painfully obvious that the once-grand area has suffered decades of abuse and neglect.

If you want to learn more about the documentary, check out their website.