BEYOND THE RANDOM BRUSHINGS OF BIRDS: BLACK WOMEN ON THE MEANING OF THE SAINTS TO POST-KATRINA RECOVERY OF HOME By Marita Cori Gilbert A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Kinesiology – Doctor of Philosophy 2017 ABSTRACT BEYOND THE RANDOM BRUSHINGS OF BIRDS: BLACK WOMEN ON THE MEANING OF THE SAINTS TO POST-KATRINA RECOVERY OF HOME By Marita Cori Gilbert The New Orleans Saints transformed themselves from worst to first in the National Football League (NFL), winning their first Super Bowl in franchise history five years after Hurricane Katrina. Observing New Orleans’ unique celebratory culture, the media debated the team’s success as symbolic of the recovery of the City. New Orleanians would disagree that this event, momentous as it was, connotes the work of recovering home is done. Instead, the Saints embodied a hopeful resilience. The team functioned as a conduit to the practice of celebratory memorial, for which New Orleans is known—mourning sorrow through festive celebration. Celebrating the Saints (and their Super Bowl Championship season) exemplified the second line tradition—the cultural performance of home as a shared, embodied knowledge of transcendence blending a visual, emotional, and kinetic experience of narrative, rhythm, food, community, and resistance. Thus, the meaning of the Saints’ success exceeded football—it provided a vehicle for New Orleans’ cultural aesthetic of home. Still, there exists a dissonance between legitimated narratives and narratives constructed from lived experience—specifically those of black women, erased not only from the center of the “Saints as recovery” narratives but from disaster recovery narratives in their entirety. Black women’s accounts were ignored, despite expressed intergenerational bonds with the team as fans and consumers, their experiences rendered undetectable. Indeed, the Saints are an important thread in the fabric of the post-Katrina recovery story. However, understanding the Saints as the story is a problematic act of epistemic silencing enacted against black women recovering home in real-time, possessing relevant narrative and theoretical contributions. This dissertation is a theoretical exercise, blending visual study and a black feminist epistemological framework to interrogate the narratives of black women on-the-ground to understand the meaning of the New Orleans Saints 2010 Super Bowl victory to the post-Katrina recovery of home. The project was designed as an 18-month ethnographic study, combining archival research, participant observation, and photo elicitation interviews with 7 black women (ages 23-81). Five images that depicted the Saints phenomenon as well as themes from extant literature accompanied a semi-structured interview schedule to empower participants as experts and encourage self-authored narratives describing the meaning of the Saints to the post-Katrina recovery of home. Findings suggest that the Saints’ success is integral in the recovery of home— as the embodiment of New Orleans unique culture of celebratory memorial as step toward healing. Copyright by MARITA CORI GILBERT 2017 For my parents, Paul and Linetta Gilbert, who have loved much, sacrificed much, provided much, taught much, counselled much, prayed MUCH…Thank you for giving me the gift of life and a home in New Orleans. In memory of my grandmothers, now ancestors—Aline Caldwell, Betty Cory, and Lee Esther Edwards. May my life be the embodiment of your unspoken prayers and bring to life your dreams deferred. For my Aunt Colitta, who cared for me as her own and my Aunt Yvonne, whose love throughout my life cannot be quantified. Our shared moments help me make it through. And for Patricia Ward and LaVerne Kappel, my junior high school teachers, who SAW ME, encouraged me, and created opportunities and the space for a black girl to manifest her dreams. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “[W]herever there has been a struggle, black women have been identified with that struggle.” – Ella Baker, “The Black Woman in the Civil Rights Struggle” This project was conceived (unknowingly) on August 29, 2005—simultaneously the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans and the first day of my doctoral program at Michigan State University. As I took classes, studied, and taught, this project was a life source symbiotically developing and growing within me. Yet, I would eventually discover that birthing is a process. I began laboring without the benefit of preparation or understanding of what was to come. I was entrusted with some of the most painful moments and experiences of peoples’ lives and the responsibility to do right by them was not lost on me. Thus, contractions were steady and the labor has been difficult—both physically and emotionally taxing at every stage. However, I suppose bringing something meaningful into existence should not be easy. I am grateful to the midwives—Drs. Kristie Dotson, Martha Ewing, Deb Feltz, and Steve Gold for their patience and guidance through this process. I especially thank Kristie for wiping the tears from eyes and the sweat from my brow, for holding my hand, and for helping me to PUSH. And, I am thankful for my village for their love, support, and prayers throughout… Thank you Daddy, for everything! You are the great love of my life—my confidant, my cheerleader, my counselor, my backbone, my wish granter and magic maker, my calm, my very best friend. You made me the priority of your life and because you did I believed I was important, I deserved to take up space—that my desires, my needs, my ideas are important. You vi have never limited the possibilities for my life. Thank you for building a home for us in New Orleans. That decision formed the foundation for who I be and made every word on every page of this project possible. To the woman who birthed me, you taught me to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of my home. Nobody loves a second line more than you, Mama! I will be forever grateful that on a cold Tuesday afternoon—my very first Mardi Gras day—you bundled me up and took me to see Big Chief Bodalis. From that moment, the backdrop of my world was painted with canvases colored by tambourines, culture, feathers, history, beads, rhythm, community, dance, the beauty of my people, chanting, and resistance. You planted a seed that took root deep in my spirit, though I would not realize or understand it until much later. I remember a moment in my own recovery when my soul was submerged in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina. I began playing a cd with a compilation of “sounds from New Orleans” as I prepared to teach a unit about the cultural rituals. The instant I heard Big Chief Bodalis and the Wild Magnolias start singing I could feel myself floating to the surface—and the elements of this project began to make sense and come together. Your spirit has been the reminder that regardless of your pain, when you hear the second line, you gotta ROLL! I am surrounded by a community of women who continue to nurture me into my own black womanhood. My heartfelt gratitude is immeasurable for all my mamas—who have paved the way and poured into me, for their sacrifice, for their sheer black woman determination that willed my success and the completion of this project into being—even those whose names I may not recall or will never know. I have been sustained by the guidance of my Teedie, Audrey Jackson Johnson, my othermother, Lora Carmicle, and my godsister, Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes vii who embodied black feminisms before the first release of those words from my lips. Thank you to Gramma Lee Esther, Ms. Gloria, and of course, Lil’ Mama for the kind of grandmother love that is always what I need. I thank my nannies—T’Vicky (Victoria Dorsey) and T’Lisa (Green- Derry) for being the aunties (pronounced in New Orleans ANT-teez) that are always exactly what I need, just when I need it. In the tradition of black feminisms, I have been blessed with a host of othermothers. Thank you Aunt Jessie, Mama Jamilah, Mama Saundra (Reed), Mama Carol (Belle), Mama Trudell (Webster), Cynthia Ross, T’Di (Diane Boisseau), Ms. Eve (Francois), and Ms. Vicky (Charles). Ashleigh, you fight for New Orleans with your whole being. What an inspiration you are! I am forever grateful to all of the grandmothers, Teedies, aunties, nannies, godmothers, and sister-friends for standing in the gap. A special expression of gratitude to Ms. Freddi Evans for a lifetime of support and for writing the text that would frame a lens through which I could conceptualize this work. I am indebted to Alex, Briceshanay, Mama Carol, Aunt Jessie, Jocquelyn, Laurena, Mama Saundra, Ms. Whilda, and Timolynn for your powerful insights that guided and informed this work. Your courage, your trust, and faith in me are gifts I can never repay. Thank you Mama Cherice and Brian (Harrison Nelson) for inviting me in and for sharing the culture. Big Queen Reesie you are “pretty, pretty” inside and out. There are not sufficient words to thank Christian Unity Baptist Church and the Ashe’ Cultural Arts Center. You have been there through it all. You hold me up when I do not possess the strength to stand. In the most difficult moments, the Sisters of the Academy (SOTA) encouraged me to labor on. I am grateful for your sisterhood, your sister-scholar energy and wisdom, and the space to transition from one stage to another. This process of birthing has taken me far from home. I am thankful that I did not labor viii alone. My life is richer for having known Bridgette Laskey, Olive Ikeh, and Marini Lee and I am humbled to call you sister-friends.