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     Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On
    Mardi Gras Day"
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The African-American legend series highlights the accomplishments of blacks and areas as Veritas politics, sports, aviation, business, literature and religion. We will explore how African-Americans have succeeded in areas where they've been previously excluded because of segregation, racism and lack of opportunity. I'm your host, Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr., and with us today is Fatima Shake, author and literary critic. Glad to have you with us today, Fatima. Hi, how are you, Roscoe? Now, you're from New Orleans, and one of your well-received books was a book called The Mayor of New Orleans. You also have family in New Orleans, and you know very much what happened during Katrina. Well, what was your personal reaction to what happened back there in August? My personal reaction, Roscoe, was, well, we used to have a natural disaster, so we used
to be evacuating and then sort of going back home in a few days. What was surprising to me was that we were unable to go back home, not just from the hurricane, but because of the lack of services and support that we received down there. I was appalled. Now, you say New Orleans's residence are accustomed to disasters, which has to do with the way the city was built below sea level in the light. But the African community, the Canadian community, have been there for a long time and have survived. What made this so different? Well, I think it's a number of things. I think that, first of all, there was a lot of, the environment has changed, right? The actual environment, the atmosphere, some of the wetlands that could have been supported as years have passed, have not been supported. They've gotten the funds to keep the wetlands healthy, so there's been a lot of erosion. I think the levees have changed the water flow, so those sort of environmental things have changed.
Also, the population has gotten bigger, a lot bigger, as any urban center has gotten, and it's also gotten a lot poorer, it's very poor, and the literacy rates are very low. So the combination of all those things is pretty bad, I mean, I think there were messages that didn't get across to people, in terms of evacuate, there were people who were not able to evacuate because of their circumstances, and I also think that people were dependent on government, and I guess when I say I was appalled, the first time when you asked me whether I was appalled, I think I was appalled that the leadership that we have elected in federal, state, local, didn't do their job, frankly, I don't think anybody did their job. Clearly, the public knows they didn't do their job, but I don't believe it was willful. I just think that they were surprised and didn't know how to plan to get the job done. For example, there were warnings where they were up here in New York, two or three days that people would evacuate, but then they didn't have the means for lowering some people to evacuate, and some of the middle income people couldn't get the gasoline and so on
to evacuate, so it was a surprise, it was almost like 9-11. You can't plan for it, but then once it happened, what do you do? The idea they were sent to convention centers under the Super Bowl, everything's going to be all right, but then they didn't have services of food in the Super Bowl. Right, right. And in that way, I disagree with you a little bit saying that you can't plan. I think there's certain things you can plan for. They didn't. And I guess that what bothers me is that I do my job and you do your job, right? And if I was elected to a particular position, I would say, well, these are certain things that I have to take care of. I have to prioritize. And I think that across the board, people are not prioritizing poor people, and people who don't have the means just poor and disenfranchised people, sort of. They're just not being taken care of in the way that you expect government to take care of them. You know, the shelter of last result, well, the government is the last resort, right?
That's what we've always expected, people, you know? Well, you are a true idealist. I am a true idealist. I have a criticism. One of the New Orleans representatives said the hurricane did something that we've been trying to do is get blacks out of town for 50 years, which really meant it wasn't a high priority of protecting. The low-lying African-American communities. Now on a personal level, the political thing is one thing, but on a personal level, how did your family fare? Not so good. Well, we didn't lose too many people, but we lost people. We didn't lose people because they didn't evacuate, but we lost people because they were elderly. In one case, one of my elder elders was lost, which is another case of poor planning. There were people who I noted have had heart attacks just out of the sadness, you know? So those are sort of the things that we see at home, you know?
At the same time, the people who have stayed or who have come back are very courageous. You know, they're going into houses and they're gutting their houses. They're trying to... I mean, it sounds trite because we've seen all of these images on television, but these people are waking up every morning and trying to go to work if they have a job, and if they're not going to work, they're going into a shell of a building and just ripping up the floors and it's hard, smelly work, you know, and that's what they're doing. They still get together. They still cook and they still have parties, you know? So that's new all-ins, that's what I'm saying, I find that somewhat inconceivable that your place is falling apart, and yet you are having partying, gumbo talking about jazz. But we have gotten to go yet. Is that really happening or is that the media suggesting to us that everything is going to be okay? No, no, that's happening. That is the spirit of New Orleans and that doesn't really have anything to do with government or business or money.
Those are the people, not those are the people who you don't want to lose, right? Nobody's real New Orleans who, when they are faced with some problem, they start laughing. And they start making talks. No, they're real New Orleans. Well, not us. You wrote the book that we have New Orleans and we know that- And I've read three children's books. We know that, and of course, we know your children's books, of course, you're very good at. But we know that the African-Americans, an occasion, so on, in New Orleans, are part of the culture, but they really weren't part of the economy. No, they were not part of the econ, well, that's an interesting question. They were part of the economy and they were faced with, basically, they did not own. Well, there were levels of ownership, right? The majority own nothing, not even themselves, historically, right? There was a level of people who did have some ownership through this sort of plasage system and where they had a common law, white husband, or a shipper, or a plan, or something.
And women owned a lot of property, women compared to the rest of the country. So you had a level of ownership and then they were able to give their children, the laws in Louisiana allowed for inheritance by half whites in New Orleans. So you did have some ownership, and that's what I think gave, there was some money circulating in the black community. Now, with regard to who is a real New Arlenian, there are people who have been there for many generations, and there are people who have come and sort of adopted New Orleans. You don't only live for many generations. We've been there many generations, at least for that I can count. And there are a lot of people in New Orleans have gone, in fact, one of the statistics that I saw was that 90% of the people who lived in New Orleans were born there. So most of the people have been there for quite some time, and most of them don't have
a whole lot of money. And if they did have money, in the 19th century, these setups that I was talking about before, if they did have money in the 19th century, after reconstruction, there was a systematic terrorism that just sort of took the money away from them. Businesses were close, segregation started in any mobility that they may have had for a while, was disappeared. Well, as the senator said, they wanted to move the black folks out of New Orleans. Right. I believe New Orleans was, what, 50% black or 60% black? At least 60. And they wanted to move it so it could gentrify and bring in businesses and so on. How did the African-American community respond to that before Quotina, were they passive in opposing the fact they were trying to be moved out, or were they active in trying to do something to rebuild their own community? I think there was always people who were trying to rebuild the community in your churches and your non-profits.
And I think a lot of the people were just trying to get up every day and have a job and have something to eat. A lot of people who were just very poor that had children. So I think, I don't think they were passive, I think they were overwhelmed. I think they were overwhelmed before. And I don't think that there was any great movement to move them out before Quotina, because people who had money sort of lived in other enclaves. What they had basically done, I'd say since the 60s, 70s, which has happened in many urban centers, is that after integration, whites fled. So the people who stayed were people, like my family, who have been there for generations, who were perfectly happy, and if people didn't want to live with us, well, that was their business. So people stayed in the community, Xavier University stayed in the community, as soon as stayed in the community, and the other college is stayed in the community, right? And so did the people, but I think the people who were left, many of the people who were left in the middle of the city were poor. And the people who lived on the outskirts, the suburbs had developed, the whites generally went to metering, and the blacks went to New Orleans East, the ones who had little influence,
and then got out of these old houses and poor streets, and went to bigger homes where they had bigger lots of stuff. They went out to the East, which was a lower lion area. It sounds like the myth of the United States, this was a great cultural center. Everybody got along, but they didn't really, and everybody didn't benefit from it. Like this, you call it the Spirit of New Orleans, the food and the music and the art and so on, projected New Orleans as a cultural center. It was also a seaport center, he occupationally. But again, it had a high crime rights, poor school systems, which meant that they did not have the infrastructure to withstand a minor catastrophe, let alone a major catastrophe. So that brings us back to the political leaders. Why do you think they weren't prepared for a container or weren't prepared to restructure New Orleans, so to be a safe and productive city for everyone?
That's a good question. I don't know if there was, that too, I think, is a sort of the history of the United States. I don't think there's political will to take care of people who don't necessarily vote and don't have money to give to you campaigns. But blacks voted in the majority, they put it in the African American mayor. The African American mayor talked up for a while, but I understand some of the African Americans didn't feel he provided adequate leadership. What do you think about that? I don't know. I think it's a really good question. It disappoints me that when we have leaders that come in, we are always still fighting with each other, right? I think that's everywhere. I think on the same token, I think that we can fight with our leaders just like everybody else can fight with their leaders, right? So why should we, because we're black, be any different than whites who fight among themselves? The problem is that when our leaders fight among themselves, we take a big a hit.
It affects us worse because we need those services badly and we depend on government so much. In a way that, as much as I know about Chicago government and the first daily, I think New Orleans was sort of like that. Traditionally, it's been like, well, my family gets in and we help the people we know in their friends. And I think that's basically what's been going on down there among blacks and among whites, first of whites did it and then blacks did it. So where does that leave any of us? I don't know. Well, why does the spirit of New Orleans still possess? They brought back the New Orleans Jazz Festival. They had a mini-modic rod and people said this mural is a grow, it's going to be different that they estimated that probably half the people who would push out won't come back and it'll be a different city with majority of white and middle-class people. Why do people in New Orleans cheer this? Why do they say we have got so much spirit and we're bringing back New Orleans?
Why do they say that? Well, I don't, okay, now who's cheering? The people are cheering that they're alive, right? Number one. Everybody's happy to be alive, right? The business leaders are trying to rally the economy in the way that people invited people to New York after 9-11, right? So they're trying to do that with the Jazz Festival. And I think that just the spirit, the culture itself doesn't really come but it doesn't come from business leaders, business leaders just capitalize on what's there, right? The culture comes from the people themselves. I don't think the people themselves are cheering the fact that they have disappeared. I think they are at home doing what they always did, which is to sit around together, talk to each other, play music, you know, some of those play music. Mostly they talk to each other and laugh and tell jokes and try to help each other. And I think they're still going to process what, no matter what government does. People will call up their cousins and they'll call up their neighbors, you know, help each other cut the grass, you know, do all that sort of things that they used to do before.
But what about their neighbors that are in Houston and in Atlanta and Northern Louisiana? Those folks may never get back unless there's a plan. That's right. And one of the plans was to build affordable housing, and another one of the plans was to build a living system in such a way that it's protective. Another one is to take care of the marshlands and the softlands. We're a little of that is happening. Now, why is that? I think it's overwhelming to the government too. I think that they're haven't emerged yet as if yet any leaders, no leaders have really emerged to say that that may be. They're bringing back the New Orleans Saints, they have a big thing, they drafted Reggie Borscht, they're going to have to sue for the home and, you know, people are flying and flying out. But what about the business community do? How do they feel about this? I can't speak for them. I know you can't speak. Because you're a former newspaper reporter, you have a perception. My perception of the business community, I hesitate to say.
The person that I know, you know, there's been a real estate fellow who's spoken out about that the poor people won't come back, right? And they're probably doing better off-weighted word. That's the only one that I can really say that I've followed. I think business community is going to take care of business interests. Now to the extent that business interests are aided by what we do, we black people do, they'll have us there. If they don't need us, I don't see any great love for us to be there, right? You know, if they can, it's economics, right? I mean, if they can get it cheaper, it doesn't really matter to them. I think what's going to happen is that is the change that's going to happen in New Orleans. If it is run, it is, if it's business driven, right? If they care about just doing things cheaper, replicating something cheaper, then they will not get the genuine New Orleans who are in Houston and California and out in a parts of Louisiana, right? Because they won't be able to afford it to come back, right? So your gumbo is going to taste different, you know, and your food will taste different,
your music is going to be different, right? Now, who cares about that? The people who live there who grew up there and know what the genuine thing is, right? Or who don't know, will it matter to them, they just won't know. You're an artist, you're a writer, you're a professor, you're a journalist. If you were writing about this today, what would you choose to focus on? I've written a few pieces recently and what I have focused on were the people, the poor, who are not really welcomed back, and that those poor are the people who cook the food and who dance, and play the music, but I mean, not even play the music, not even the employed musicians, right? Although some of them are employed musicians. I'm talking about the people that you walk down the street and you talk to them, people talk a lot in New Orleans, you stand on the corner and somebody will talk to you and they'll tell you about their life or their grandmother or how they did something.
Those are the people who are going to be missed and the people who just come out and when there's a second line for read, who just come out and make the crowd and actually know how to do the dance. Those are the people that are going to be missed and that's the sort of thing that I've been writing about. Unless there is affordable housing and unless there are jobs for them to come back to, they probably will do better someplace else, but I think it's a shame that we think that we're better off without them. That's where I think the problem is, you know, sure they'll take something better, but to say that we'll probably do better without them, no, we won't do better without them. Well, that means that your role and the role of others to carry this message to the nation. Because the nation's really confused, we were confused that they let those people just fester in the Super Bowl in a convention center. We were confused that they wouldn't bring them back. We were confused that they had an election where people couldn't vote. I guess the role of journalists and artists and writers is to bring this to the attention
of the nation because we talk about the spirit of New Orleans, but the spirit of New Orleans is a mixture of all the things that you described, the culture and the poverty and the songs and the work and so on. And I understand now they're concerned about African American workers being replaced by Mexican and Central American workers. How is that playing out? Well, I'm not quite sure, I do know that a lot of, I don't know how it's playing out politically or, you know, I can tell you what I see. When I go down there and I was there a couple of weeks ago, when I go down there, a lot of the work is being done by people who appear to be from Latin America or Hispanic origin. So I have to tell from New Orleans, it's hard to tell, right? But they appear to be of Hispanic origin. The reason I think and that we think that they are of Hispanic origin if they are in fact of Hispanic origin is because they're getting lower wages.
Why are they getting lower wages? Because they probably don't have unions, they don't have support, they don't have housing either. In fact, I talked to somebody, a woman who was working in a hospital down there and she told me that some of these workers had just moved into some of the empty houses in Hublock. You know, so they're not being provided with the things that we believe Americans should be provided with, American workers should be provided with. So some people are feeling, well, why don't we have the work? And I think, you know, black people down there say, well, why don't we have the work? Why are you bringing people in? Well, it seems to me that it's cheaper to bring people in, not provide them with housing and just let them do the work and send them away. Don't give them health care, don't give them housing, don't let them form a union, right? If you get union electricians and union people, but my vision of America, right, is that we're supposed to have things like unions and we're supposed to protect people that get sick or injured on the job. And we're supposed to have living wages. One of the things that they were talking about, they said they don't, that the poor people can't come back, well, why don't you not make them poor when they come back, you know?
Why don't you give them decent jobs and they won't be poor? You won't have a poor people problem, you know? You just spread the wealth around a little bit more, right? Instead of the billions of dollars coming in and out of the poor or the billions of dollars going in and out of the hotels, the tourists coming in, then how about giving your workers a little bit more money, you won't have so many poor people. Well, in the sense, Quotina was a reflection of what had been happening for years. And all that just didn't go into these problems in the past, these problems had been existing for 25 or 30 years and it's that legislators said we've been trying to remove the poor people so we can do something with the land and so on. So how does the African-American community really respond to this, are they churches that are active, are they community groups that are active, are they nation political parties that are active? Because it seems like this is a disaster that has happened and a greater disaster is waiting to happen.
So what's the African-American community, people like you and your family are going to do about this? Well, I'm writing, my family is working and they're trying to get their lives together. I think there are some people that are working in political campaigns down there. I think there are people who are trying to be on committees and working with churches, I know my church is Corpus Christi, my home church down there and they're working with people. You have to remember part of the problem is that a lot of the people who are trying to work and do something are homeless. So many of the people who would, I have cousins who had lost their jobs for a month or two, who don't have their homes, who don't have all of their families, some of their families disperse and those are the people who would usually be political, who would usually be the philanthropists and the backbone to the community, they have suffered lots of disasters too. Now, what do people do? There are lots of people like Norman Francis and Xavier University who are on committees and who are doing work and trying to do things about New Orleans. It's moving slowly though because a lot of African-American community who would be doing
the work are scattered, right, they're out there. So that's the sad part of it. For us to, I think Acorn is doing a lot of work by a town. Some interfaith groups are doing a lot of work. Habitat for Humanity is doing work. The black community is suffered, has suffered quite a bit. The people who would be in leadership positions are trying to lead from where they are, you know, are coming in a little bit but they still have to eat, they still have to sleep somewhere. I mean, it's these really basic things that you're talking about, you know? Well, your discussion is very enlightening and it seems to me that more discussions like this ought to take place because you've enlightened me and I'm sure the audience would some of the things that you've pointed up, but Cortina was big news in September, October. It's dropping off. Now what can you do to keep that in front of people?
The jazz festival is one thing but that's really drawing tourists and giving them an message of New Orleans is okay to come and play with. But what about New Orleans is a place to live? What about a place to work? How do you get that message across? Well, I think people just have to keep talking about it and going down there and reporters still need to come down there. Hope that the imagination of the United States or American people is not so limited that it just sees things that they can see the bigger picture and not just a festival here or a music, you know, some musical thing that happens that they see that New Orleans is a microcosm of what can happen in the rest of the country if we're not aware and prepare of the things that should be done. I think we should take our leadership when we go to the polls to elect people. We should be a lot more conscious about who's being elected and whether they have the ability to do the work that they're trying to say that they're going to do. I think we have to do that in New York and Detroit and Chicago and Houston and everywhere
and not just blow it off, you know. Yeah, but you've made an interesting point that we know that they will be able to do this. The only way you know what a politician does is what the politician has done. Right. Well, you know what? I was thinking about this earlier and it seems to me that for a while we were enamored with people who said that I'm not a politician, right? And at one point we said, oh, it'll give us fresh ideas and now I think we're starting to realize that what it means is that they haven't given any service to the people prior to this election that they're running and I think we need to see what is their service? What is their history of service to people and whether they'll bring that same commitment with them? You know, I think we're afraid of what sort of deals they might make or something like that. Well, I don't think that's the question anymore. I think the question is, do they have any commitment to anybody besides themselves? One last question. Do you plan to write a book about this? Of course. Of course. I can't help but write a book about it. But now what I had to do for a little while has turned to journalism, I wrote some articles
so I had to do nonfiction for a while. I'm actually, my agent has a book right now, a nonfiction book that talks about the history of New Orleans, the people of color in New Orleans in the 19th century called the Societe de economy of going through their journals and this you asked me about black people before. This is a story of 16 black men who were active in the community in the 19th century. So that's what I'm writing. Well, I know we'll be hearing from Fatima Shake. I want to thank Fatima Shake for being with us on today's African American legends and talking about just what has happened in this very vibrant city of New York. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Series
African American Legends
Episode
Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On Mardi Gras Day"
Contributing Organization
CUNY TV (New York, New York)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/522-3f4kk9561q
NOLA Code
AAL 026008
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Description
Series Description
African-American Legends profiles prominent African-Americans in the arts, in politics, the social sciences, sports, community service, and business. The program is hosted by Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Jr., Director of the Center for Urban Education Policy at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a former President of Bronx Community College.
Description
Dr. Roscoe C. Brown Jr., welcomes novelist, Fatima Shaik to African American Legends to discuss the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the future plans for the African American community in New Orleans. To find out more about Fatima Shaik and her books on New Orleans, visit her website, www.fatimashaik.com. Taped May 4, 2006.
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Taped May 4, 2006
Created Date
2006-05-04
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Episode
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Moving Image
Duration
00:27:50
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CUNY TV
Identifier: 15757 (li_serial)
Duration: 00:27:49:00
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Citations
Chicago: “African American Legends; Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On Mardi Gras Day" ,” 2006-05-04, CUNY TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-522-3f4kk9561q.
MLA: “African American Legends; Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On Mardi Gras Day" .” 2006-05-04. CUNY TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-522-3f4kk9561q>.
APA: African American Legends; Fatima Shaik, novelist, "The Mayor of New Orleans" and "On Mardi Gras Day" . Boston, MA: CUNY TV, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-522-3f4kk9561q