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FEMA gives 90 more days for Hurricane Ida appeals
Desperate Louisiana bayou residents lined up from morning until night earlier this week, trying to file complicated FEMA documents by the agency’s March 1 deadline for Hurricane Ida recovery aid. Rosina Philippe, a tribal elder with Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha tribe, barely slept all week, as she and a group of housing advocates set up folding tables in […]
FEMA deadline for Hurricane Ida assistance maroons coastal residents
PLAQUEMINES PARISH – Rosina Philippe, a tribal elder with Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha tribe, needs more time to help villages like hers recover from damage caused by Hurricane Ida in 2021. Philippe is a native of Grand Bayou Indian Village, a bayou community in lower Plaquemines Parish that was built by indigenous people and lies outside any levee […]
7th Ward residents try to hold on to culture as neighborhood changes
NEW ORLEANS – As his clippers hummed, barber Jaron “JRoc” Williams explained how his block of Touro Street has changed since he started cutting hair here 27 years ago, at age 13. Today, Williams, at 40 is one of the block’s steadfast figures, known for wielding his scissors and comb behind the vintage red barber […]
Albert Woodfox, Angola 3 member, ‘Solitary’ author, dies at 75
This story was originally published by Verite, a nonprofit news outlet based in New Orleans. Albert Woodfox, the prison activist and member of the Angola 3 whose memoir “Solitary” was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, died Thursday (Aug. 4) at Ochsner Baptist Hospital after contracting the COVID-19 virus. He […]
Seated together: new Louisiana Civil Rights Trail honors Dooky Chase’s for defying segregation
NEW ORLEANS — Last month, as her audience lunched on fried chicken and mustard greens, Sybil Morial summarized why the first marker for the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail was installed outside the dining room’s door, in front of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. Seventy years ago, this place defied de jure segregation, said Morial, 88, a former […]
In Angola’s Oak 4 dormitory Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling douses hopes
The news spread quickly on Monday from the nation’s highest court to its largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. That morning, in the case Edwards v. Vannoy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that its 2020 Ramos v. Louisiana decision — which held that the Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury applies […]