PBS response

In response to the PBS special on New Orleans, the first words that come to mind are community, music, food, history, culture, and life. I am writing a response to Chapter 7, the chapter about Dooky Chase’s restaurant. First of all I think the restaurants beginnings are a key component. There was no place for African Americans to go out and eat until this place opened. Not only were they not aloud to eat with whites, there was no place for them to go at all. The cook, and owner, explains how back in 1941 since African Americans and Whites couldn't eat together, that that even included famous. People like Duke Ellington, Thurgood Mar-shall, and Big Daddy King. They all had to go to Dooky Chase’s.
The owner said the reason they have to rebuild after Katrina destroyed the restaurant is that she has to “build a community again”. That statement right there is what New Orleans is all about. It’s about life. Food is something in New Orleans that people turn to for celebration, for comfort, for community. Now one might find that in other American cities people behave similarly when it comes to food, but in my experience having traveled all over the United States, no other city holds such deeply rooted cultural and historical ties to food, and music for that matter.
This chapter reminded me of the comments I heard some people say after the storm. Some were saying, “Why don’t they just move?” Someone else said to me, “Why would anyone want to go back there after how devastating that storm was?” and lastly “Why rebuild?” After spending just a week in post-Katrina New Orleans I could never imagine how we could allow this city, this jewel of American historical culture, to fall and be abandoned.