This story appears in the May/June 2025 issue of ESSENCE, on newsstands April 24.
“It was silent. I’d never heard the city so quiet. There were no birds, dogs or cats, but more importantly, no music. In all my years of living, I had never heard New Orleans like that.” This is how Ausettua AmorAmenkum, 69, recalls her return to her home, following the destruction Hurricane Katrina brought upon her native town in August of 2005.
It’s now been 20 years since the crushing tropical cyclone submerged at least 80 percent of New Orleans. Many of us watched the storm ravage the city, the waters of Lake Pontchartrain pouring over houses and streets. Helpless Black people pleaded for aid atop the roofs of their homes as floods reached terrifying levels. In pure shock, we saw the destruction play out on the news, knowing that the people of New Orleans were trapped. Black American lives hung in the balance, the result of poor communication between state and federal agencies (due to a massive miscalculation of how bad the storm would be) and a slow and disappointing response from FEMA. The devastation gripped the nation.
For those who lived through it, the vivid memories run deep. “Can you imagine houses just pushed off their foundation on top of a boat? It was haunting,” AmorAmenkum says of the unrecognizable state of her neighborhood at the time. “When I got home, the streets were still impassable, because all the trees and wires were down.”
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, it not only left nearly 2,000 people dead, but it displaced approximately 1.5 million residents, most of whom were low-income and living on the edge to begin with. Places like New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, as well as the Seventh Ward, were particularly hard hit, because of those areas’ proximity to the Mississippi River and the clay-soil foundation on which the neighborhoods are built. As a result of the hurricane, those communities were left desolate.
An assessment of residents who returned to New Orleans, spearheaded by the CDC in October of 2005, highlighted that more than 50 percent of respondents were in need of mental health treatment, with participants demonstrating signs of anxiety, PTSD and depression. Another study, titled “The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mental and Physical Health of Low-Income Parents in New Orleans,” conducted five years later, showed that the rate of probable serious mental illness doubled following the event. Twenty years may have passed since the storm, but the city of New Orleans and its survivors are still grappling with the effects of Hurricane Katrina—mentally, physically and emotionally.
Chemwapuwa Blackman, 36, Psy.D., is a co-founder of NOLA Black Mental Health Matters, an organization dedicated to uplifting the state of mental health, advocacy, and education throughout New Orleans. She was 16 at the time the hurricane hit, and she can attest to the mental toll the experience had on her and her loved ones. “I recall wondering when, if ever, we could go back home,” she says. “After fear, panic, overwhelming sadness and grief, I became numb. When I realized that we would have to start over elsewhere, my life felt like a dream. I was angry and depressed. I had nightmares about the flooding in New Orleans.”
Blackman says surviving the experience wasn’t the catalyst for her helping people in New Orleans address their mental health needs. Rather, it was the aftermath of the storm, and the social disparities that were always present, that motivated her to cofound NOLA Black Mental Health Matters. “Helping Black people who are suffering, due to racial inequities in wealth and education in New Orleans, had been my mission prior to Katrina,” she explains. “I think that the way that Black people were handled during Katrina is a reflection of those inequalities and the dehumanization of people who are not wealthy.”
The organization is made up of Black mental health practitioners, most of who are women. Cofounder and provisionally licensed psychologist Chanelle Batiste, 34, Psy.D., says their work aims to end the stigma associated with mental health issues and to create better access to care. “Our online and in-person programming is open to community members, and we have covered a number of different topics, including trauma and anxiety related to hurricane season,” she explains. “Almost all of our attendees are native New Orleanians, many of whom lived through Katrina and the aftermath, and we have been able to offer a safe space to talk about things that can be difficult to discuss.”
Fellow cofounder Tiffany Augustine, 31, Psy.D., is convinced that many Hurricane Katrina survivors dealt with anxiety and depression in the weeks and months after the storm—and that the psychological toll worsened. “As the years passed, this traumatic experience has had a lasting effect on the New Orleans community, with some survivors continuing to battle symptoms associated with PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder,” she says.
Blackman says PTSD is categorized by four primary symptoms: intrusions, avoidance, negative mood and cognitions, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. “Katrina survivors experienced nightmares of things that happened in the aftermath of the hurricane—and felt as though they were experiencing it again when hearing the sound of rain or hearing a loud noise,” she notes. “Some survivors never wanted to return to New Orleans. Katrina survivors lost hope in humanity, given how their people were treated after the disaster. Many also became hypervigilant about natural disasters and related events.”
For AmorAmenkum, the experience was a blur—one she wasn’t able to fully grasp the mental effects of until several years later. As a cultural advocate and educator, an adjunct professor of African and Hip-Hop Dance at Tulane University, and Big Queen of the Washitaw Nation Black Masking Indians, she’s proudly immersed in her community. Born in Uptown, New Orleans, in the Seventh Ward, at the time of Hurricane Katrina she lived within Esplanade Ridge. Her home survived, along with her mother’s. When the storm was unfolding, she evacuated with her mother to Greenwood and Lula, Mississippi, where the women stayed with her aunt and other family members. As someone who had lived through Hurricane Betsy in 1965, she didn’t initially think Katrina would be a catastrophic event that would have a lasting effect.
“I come from a family that never evacuated,” she says. “The first time I evacuated was for Hurricane Katrina. We always had hurricane parties. My mom raised me to buy your sardines, peanut butter and crackers, nuts—then hunker down. So Katrina has impacted me in that regard. I now contemplate evacuating for any natural disaster, whereas it was never a thought in my mind before.”
While becoming overly cautious following an event of such magnitude is not unusual, the anxiety AmorAmenkum now feels is. “In the beginning, I didn’t feel like my mental health was affected—because we’re just used to pushing on,” she says. “But I began to realize it when I had difficulty sleeping at night. I started to get anxious and had thoughts like, What if something happens at nighttime, and we’re sleeping, and we don’t get the word that a storm is coming? So now I’m more anxious when a weather system comes.”
Edward Buckles, Jr., is a visionary filmmaker and a native of New Orleans. In 2022, he released the HBO Original documentary Katrina Babies, which offers a raw and intimate look at the event’s impact on the youth of New Orleans. Buckles was 13 years old when the hurricane hit, and he never received consistent therapy for his trauma. He’s now 33 years old. “Seeing my family’s neighborhood underwater was the biggest thing I remember,” he says. “I’m sure that most kids don’t ever have to go through days of thinking that their family is dead.”
Buckles briefly saw a counselor (“for, like, 15 minutes”) while in temporary housing and attending school in Lafayette, Louisiana. But he says it didn’t feel “genuine or intentional.” He remembers returning to New Orleans nine months after the storm. He was devastated by what he witnessed—and even more so by what he didn’t see. “I was so excited to return, but when I got home, all the things I knew weren’t there anymore,” he recalls. “Everything was gone in my grandmother’s house, including family history, documents and many memories. So although I came back to New Orleans, it was like I wasn’t returning to normalcy. I was back, but my tribe was gone. I think that was when I really started feeling lost.”
Like Buckles, Blackman didn’t receive meaningful treatment for her own trauma. “While psychological first aid was at the forefront of the minds of mental health professionals who worked in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, it was not a priority, or part of the conversation, in the restorative efforts of communities that were accepting survivors across the nation,” she states. “Restorative efforts focused on providing basic needs and getting people back into the cadence of normal life. Unfortunately, mental health is often left out of that conversation. Not receiving treatment after Hurricane Katrina, realizing later on that I suffered from PTSD, and understanding that you can also suffer from PTSD as a result of community violence—a major issue in New Orleans—is what caused me to become personally interested in trauma work and inspired me to specialize in trauma.”
NOLA Black Mental Health Matters has been helping residents address all kinds of distress (hurricane and non-hurricane related), through a number of services. “Our community-driven initiatives include providing education on mental health topics through our Power Hour series on Instagram Live,” says Augustine, “and through Summit, which encourages collaboration among providers through our social mixers, social media and newsletter; offering resources and support at community events through tabling, trainings and workshops; and empowering our youth through presentations and community talks. We also create safe spaces for Black community members, through our Wellness Wednesdays and Therapeutic Thursdays.”
Adds Batiste, “Our partner, David Wallace of Dream House Lounge, assists in the curation of a space where people feel welcomed and supported. Local mental health professionals, wellness practitioners and advocates are invited to join these discussions, to ensure that we are providing an array of professional and personal perspectives. Even the seating arrangement is intentional—we sit in a circle to encourage discourse. I recall someone sharing during one of our Wellness Wednesdays that she still feels triggered when it rains. In that moment of vulnerability, we were able to hold space for her and let her know she is not alone.”
While Buckles still hasn’t seen a professional to cope with the heaviness carried from his experience, he has embraced meditation. He says survivors must find the practices and therapies that will help them attain peace of mind. It’s never too late. “I’ve been finding myself becoming frustrated with the cycle of how we grieve,” he says emphatically. “I feel like tragedy strikes and we just go into this constant cycle of, ‘Okay, well, I’m gonna dance this away. I’m gonna sing this away. I’m gonna church this away. I’m gonna do all of these things that I feel might help.’ What we’ve created to save ourselves and to resist is very essential. But I think that we are also in a place where we cannot forget that it does not erase the grief, and we still need to properly heal.”
As for the city itself, 20 years later, New Orleans has returned to being a thriving scene for tourism. New buildings have sprouted around the city. One would even say things are back to “normal.” But, Buckles asks, what happens to the Black families who can never return? “The media was basing New Orleans’s comeback story off increased tourism—and decentering the real problems that were happening,” he says. “Nobody ever talks to the kids about how they’re feeling about Katrina. How can New Orleans be rebuilt when my cousins and other families can never return?”
Buckles says Hurricane Katrina is embedded in New Orleanians’ culture to this very day—from the anger of not feeling prioritized by this country, to the grief of mourning what they’ve lost and what could’ve been, to the art of finding collective joy and restoration despite it all. “I think that what’s important, when it comes to Hurricane Katrina, is to underscore that people still have not healed from that storm,” he reflects. “Although it was 20 years ago, we are still processing that storm. We are still bouncing back from that storm. We are still trying to heal from that storm. The impact of Hurricane Katrina is not 20 years old—it’s now. Things happen all the time, in New Orleans, because of the impact and parallels of that storm.”
Despite the losses incurred and wounds that remain, Buckles, Blackman and AmorAmenkum—and so many other New Orleanians—take immense pride in their city. “We will rep the 504 until the day we die, but the 504 is not always good to us,” AmorAmenkum declares. “Some of the most beautiful creativity comes out of this place, but imagine a place where people don’t have to suffer to create beauty. I don’t understand why out of such oppression comes such beautiful cultural expressions, but Black people are the soul of New Orleans; make no mistake about it. New Orleans was built on the backs of people of color. We are a resilient, creative people, and we can endure. When I came back home to New Orleans after Katrina, it was for my ancestors.”
