Hurricane Katrina: My Story, My Shift
By Airis Freeman
In 2005, Hurricane season in New Orleans was supposed to be "routine." Folks from the city would shrug and tell me, "Baby, you ride it out, you'll be fine." But I wasn't from there. I was a transplant, an Ohio girl who moved south after graduating from high school to attend Grambling State University back in 1997. It was all new to me.
New Orleans was and is magic: Black culture in full bloom, gumbo pots of tradition, music on every corner, people carrying history in their walk. But let me tell you, when Katrina came through, that magic got tested in ways I still carry.
I'd lived through a couple of storms before Katrina, the kind where you evacuate, then come back like nothing happened. I remember one time the streets were so flooded I had to park at a Kroger grocery store, and wade through water just to get home. It was messy, but it wasn't devastation. So when Katrina loomed, at first it felt like another drill. I was working retail at Walmart back then, and if you know Walmart, you know it never sleeps. We were boarding up windows, rushing customers through, and it hit me: this one is different.
My friend had family in Houston, so my partner at the time and her daughter packed up and rolled out. Usually, that drive from New Orleans to Houston takes five or six hours. That day? Try 10 or 12. Highways were jammed with people who didn't want to die in the city they loved. Reroutes, gas stations packed, people tired and scared, but moving. There was this unspoken rhythm to it all, like a mass migration with fear as the bassline.
We made it to Houston, found a patch of floor to crash on, and waited. But the storm didn't "blow over." It tore the roof off our lives. The images on TV of people stranded on rooftops, mostly Black, mostly poor, weren't strangers to me. They looked like my cousins, my aunties, my neighbors. Watching the government's response, it felt like a knife was twisting in our backs.
My mama called, being the mama she was, and said: "Come home." So I did, one bag in hand, everything else left behind in New Orleans. In Ohio, I signed up with FEMA, applied for jobs, and tried to rebuild from scratch. Retail wasn't my passion, and deep down I knew I wanted something greater. Katrina, in a strange way, was the push. I knew I had to start living with purpose, not just working to survive.
Eventually, I moved to Baltimore, which brought me closer to my family. From 16 hours away to just five. It was a blessing hidden inside destruction. When I returned to New Orleans, nothing was the same. My apartment? A wreck. Not just from the storm, but from people breaking in. When the city was abandoned, it became open season as people struggled to survive. That cut deep. But you know what? Things can be replaced. My spirit couldn't.
New Orleans was and is magic: Black culture in full bloom, gumbo pots of tradition, music on every corner, people carrying history in their walk. But let me tell you, when Katrina came through, that magic got tested in ways I still carry.
Personally, Katrina wasn't the end. For my people? For my community? It was a wound that still aches. Seeing Black folks criminalized for trying to survive, punished for being poor, left to suffer in plain sight, that shifted something in me. It sharpened my lens on what it means to be Black in America. Katrina was my awakening.
Looking back, Katrina was both a loss and a rebirth. It stole the life I had in New Orleans, but it gave me clarity. It drew me closer to family and closer to self. It carved out the space for me to reimagine who I was and who I wanted to be. As a proud Black lesbian woman, it made me even more committed to Black excellence, not just surviving storms, but building systems where we can thrive.
LeBron James once said, "Nothing is given. Everything is earned." That's how Katrina feels in my bones. The city gave me memories, and the storm took away comfort, but the resilience? That was earned. And James Baldwin once said: "The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it." Katrina taught me exactly that. Home isn't just where you live, it's where you fight, rebuild, and rise.
So when I tell my story, I tell it like this: Katrina was a disaster, yes. But it was also a mirror. It showed me who I was, who my people are, and who we refuse to stop being: unbreakable, resilient, Black, and brilliant.
Airis Freeman is an educator in Prince George's County, Md. and a former resident of New Orleans (1997-2005).