Rebuilt New Orleans must retain vitality

Updated 4:00 PM September 28, 2005

Rebuilt New Orleans must retain vitality

By Kevin Brown

Those who rebuild New Orleans must remember how diversity helped shape the city's unique character, says a Tulane University professor who will deliver the Institute for the Humanities Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture.

Lawrence Powell, a specialist on the history of the U.S. South who is visiting campus during the fall semester and teaching a course on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, will address the rebuilding of his home city in, "New Orleans: An American Pompeii?" at 4 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Honigman Auditorium in the Law School.

"These lost cities that recover simply become museum pieces. I want the city to be rebuilt in all its vitality," Powell says. "It was the drain plug of this big bathtub of Mississippi valley commerce. Because it was multicultural, the population was forced to mix together.

"In whose image is this place going to be rebuilt? We need to promote diversity or it won't be the New Orleans we knew; it won't be the seedbed of popular culture" he says.

"My worry is that the place will become kind of an adult Disneyland," Powell says, adding that tourism-related jobs are relatively low paying. Meanwhile, he says, the number of higher-paying blue-collar jobs unloading ships at the busy port have been shrinking. "Since the advent of containerization (unloading shipped containers by machine) you don't need a lot of strong backs," he says.

Powell says that a few days after his talk, he and his wife plan to return home for the first time since Katrina struck. His office at Tulane was spared flood damage. "The back part of campus took a lot of water; some of the library's holdings were damaged," he says.

Part of a tree fell on his roof in the Metairie Ridge area of the city. "A lot of people I know have lost everything. I actually feel a tinge of survivor's guilt. I have friends who refused to evacuate," he says.

Powell is a specialist on the history of Louisiana. Former executive director of the Tulane/Xavier National Center for the Urban Community, he has worked extensively in many of the neighborhoods most affected by the recent flooding. He is the author of "Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, The Holocaust and David Duke's Louisiana," which won the Lillian Smith Book Prize from the Southern Regional Council.

U-M professors Kevin Gaines, from history and Afro American and African studies; Rebecca Scott, from history and law; and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg of history, American culture and women's studies; will serve as discussants.

Rebuilt New Orleans must retain vitality

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