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4 7 8 10 VABook! Don’t Grieve Fellowship Program Tough Times 2006 After Me 20th Anniversary Companion Vol. II The Newsletter of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Winter 2006 , DDisastersisatheDiasporas,Dstiaesrpsoras, BY PABLO J. DAVIS Humanities he catastrophic sequence of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with their& accompanying fl oods, visited unimaginable devastation on New Orleans and the surrounding region, confronting us with the near-destruction of a great, celebrated, and unique American city. But the great human drama of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005 lies in their having set more than a million people in sudden movement. TRendering a human community’s home uninhabitable, or possibly the Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928, with over destroying its economic basis of survival, or both, disasters 1,800 deaths; the Katrina-Rita toll, well over 1,000, is still have historically given rise to migrations—the Old Testa- unknown). ment abounds in plagues, Pulling the lens back fi res, and fl oods that led from hurricanes to other to the prolonged wander- disasters (natural or other- ings of uprooted peoples. wise) and diasporas reveals How have the humanities a panoply of events. In responded to this lat- 1837-1838, more than est coupling of disaster 15,000 Cherokee were put and diaspora, and to others on a forced westward march in the past? in wintry conditions; over Comparative study a quarter of them died. has been one humani- Th e Johnstown Flood of ties response. Th e Gulf 1889 killed 2,200 Penn- Coast Hurricanes can be sylvanians in a population measured against other Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. Photo by Jon Lohman. of 30,000, but detonated recorded hurricanes in their no vast out-migration. Th e physical intensity at time of landfall (exceeded by Hurricane San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 killed close to 1,000 in a Camille of 1969 and the Florida Keys Hurricane of 1935) city of well over a quarter-million, but reconstruction and or by death toll (surpassed by the Galveston Hurricane of enormous in-migration lay in the near future. Th ousands 1900, which killed somewhere close to 10,000 people, and of slaves took to the roads and backwoods during the Civil Continued on page 2 Disasters, Diasporas, and the Humanities Continued from cover WINTER 2006 Virginia Foundation War, though propelled more by opportunities for for the Humanities 145 Ednam Drive freedom aff orded by wartime chaos than by disaster, Charlottesville, VA 22903-4629 strictly speaking. Th e Mississippi River Flood of 1927 killed some 500 people and displaced more (434) 924-3296 fax (434) 296-4714 than 600,000. Upwards of fi ve million African virginiafoundation.org Americans departed the South in the century after vhfi [email protected] Reconstruction, though they moved for many reasons and an epic exodus stretching over several genera- tions can hardly be considered a single event. Robert C. Vaughan, III PRESIDENT What emerges as the closest U.S. historical parallel to the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005 is the David Bearinger DIRECTOR, GRANTS AND “Dust Bowl” migration; the 1930s saw the departure PUBLIC PROGRAMS of more than one million people from the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and surrounding states in the ABOVE, TOP: Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugees, San Fernando, California. Andrew Chancey Dorthea Lange, 1935. Courtesy Library of Congress. DIRECTOR, PLANNING south-central Plains. Erosion and drought created an AND MANAGEMENT ecological crisis that virtually destroyed agriculture— BOTTOM: Dust Bowl refugees along the highway near Bakersfi eld, already pummeled by the Great Depression. At its California. Dorthea Lange, 1935. Courtesy Library of Congress. Susan Coleman DIRECTOR, VIRGINIA CENTER worst, colossal dust storms darkened skies, choked FOR THE BOOK lungs, and penetrated into homes through the tiniest days: the Federal Emergency Management Adminis- cracks and seams. Historian James Gregory’s Ameri- tration received more than 1.35 million applications Roberta Culbertson DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND EDUCATION can Exodus traces this migration’s path to California, for assistance within 25 days of Katrina’s landfall. whose culture was shaken and ultimately reshaped by Indeed, it seems safe to say that no disaster-diaspora Sheryl Hayes DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT the infl ux of poverty-battered Plains migrants who in U.S. history matches the Gulf Coast Hurricanes came to be known collectively as “Okies.” of 2005 in their combination of scale and sudden- Gail Shirley-Warren ness: well over a million men, women, and children BUSINESS MANAGER Th e diaspora triggered by Katrina and Rita, though, unfolded over not a decade, but literally a few uprooted, essentially overnight. Andrew Wyndham Another humanities response, the critical analysis DIRECTOR, MEDIA PROGRAMS of disaster, takes extreme events as windows onto society—as if a room in an apartment building were Newsletter Production Staff suddenly exposed to view by a wrecking ball’s blow or ADVISORY EDITOR a bomb’s explosion. Th e adjectivenatural has come David Bearinger into serious question, as scholarship reveals the eff ects TEXT AND WEB EDITOR of social, political, and economic geography in leaving Christina Draper some safe and others vulnerable to disasters’ eff ects. Patterns of highly uneven access to transportation CO-EDITOR (and thus the chance to evacuate to safety) in New Kevin McFadden Orleans, in a context of extreme class and race in- DISTRIBUTION MANAGER equality,equality, areare justjust oneone ooff thisthis disaster-diaspora’sdisaster-diaspora’s Lynda Myers structuralstructural components;components; another,another, thethe apparentapparent CO-EDITOR inadequacyinadequacy ofof thethe levees,levees, ledled ssomeome toto speakspeak ofof Ann White Spencer anan unprecedentedunprecedented “civil-engineering“civil-engineering disaster.”disaster.” GRAPHIC DESIGN InIn otherother words,words, humanhuman andand notnot justjust naturalnatural Keith Damiani causescauses makemake eventsevents disastrous.disastrous. Sequoia Design Co. LEFT, TOP: Removing bodies to barges for burial at sea, after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Courtesy University of Chicago Library. The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Newsletter is published three times a year. BOTTOM: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. Courtesy The VFH is an independent, nonprofi t, University of Chicago Library tax-exempt organization. 2 Winter 2006 Often arising from such concerns has been Orleans. Th e study of trans-geographic ties to place another response: a literature of denunciation. Doro- contributes further to understanding disaster-diaspo- thea Lange’s photography of Dust Bowl migrants ras, whether the community of Dust Bowl migrants stands in the critical vein, as do the writings of her resettling in Bakersfi eld, California, in the late 1930s, husband, economist Paul Taylor, and others who or the colony of New Orleans musicians emerging pointed to the human-wrought aspects of ecological today in Austin, Texas. disaster. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath stands as the Another response: study of disaster-diaspora’s most famous literary statement of the human cost. eff ects on individuals and communities. Kai Erikson’s Following the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the study of the 1972 Buff alo Creek, West Virginia fl ood Florida Keys, Ernest Hemingway angrily loosed the and its sudden, violent reversal of an Appalachian arrows of satire on the federal policies that had sent community’s slow progress out of poverty was a land- GIs there on construction projects, living in help- mark. On a national scale, historian Louis A. Perez’s lessly exposed shacks in the peak of hurricane season Winds of Change evaluated the impact of a series of (over 400 deaths). Th e inequalities and failures hurricanes in 1840s Cuba, fi nding they engendered exposed by Katrina, too, have generated widespread a here-and-now fatalism—but also a premium on Th e and passionate critique. cooperative preparation and response. Gulf Coast Yet another humanities response, also fl owing Of all the humanities responses to disaster- from the analysis of disaster, is the critical analysis diaspora, perhaps most compelling is the mission of Disaster of discourse. Such inquiries examine the narratives documenting people’s experience. Typically, working & that name, and frame, disasters—and the people they with ethnographers, folklorists, and oral historians, Diaspora:Some Key Humanities Resources aff ected. No disas- survivors bear ter-diaspora has witness to disaster, Louisiana Folklife Program been more richly diaspora, suff ering, In the Wake of the Hurricanes interpreted on this and struggle—and, www.louisianafolklife.org/katrina.html score than the Gulf across space and Coast Hurricanes time, bring outsid- Social Science Research Council of 2005—refl ecting ers closer to that Understanding Katrina the sophistication experience. Th e understandingkatrina.ssrc.org of contemporary WPA narratives media and linguistic of the 1930s stand History News Network studies’ toolkit. Of- as a sterling past Katrina Coverage ten uncritical and example of these hnn.us/articles/15043.html sensationalistic TV eff orts. Today, coverage, using the A New Orleans second line parade renews a cultural tradition on New Years Eve 2005. numerous projects racially charged The audience participates in these parades by following the brass band are emerging to to form a “second line.” Photo by Jon Lohman. frame of “looting” document the Gulf and “mob violence,” distorted the national citizenry’s Coast Hurricanes of 2005. An improvised but inspir- perceptions and may have had serious implications ing alliance of such initiatives uses the umbrella name for the national government’s response. Essayist and “Research in the Wake” (see resources box, right). media critic Leon Wynter deployed a potent analysis Some of these initiatives aim not only to docu- of obese, helpless “Auntie” and her thuggish “Neph- ment this unparalleled disaster-diaspora, but to put ew” as historically laden African American stereo- survivors at the center of the eff ort—giving them types imbuing television imagery of New Orleans. a voice, a creative role, and new skills.