Hurricane Katrina was a storm. The catastrophe was the levee and floodwall failures that met a century of segregation and disinvestment. This episode follows the water into Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East, then traces what came next: the Superdome/Convention Center bottlenecks, the Gretna bridge blockade, and gunfire in the aftermath—Danziger Bridge (two people killed, officers later convicted/pleaded and served time), Henry Glover (killed; body burned; federal time for part of the cover-up), and Algiers Point vigilantes (shootings, a federal guilty plea and sentence).

We unpack the paper flood that followed: FEMA delays, insurance denials (wind vs. flood), and the Road Home grants that paid by pre-storm appraised value—penalizing historically undervalued Black neighborhoods. Then schools and housing: mass teacher layoffs, charter takeover, demolition of the “Big Four” public housing with fewer units rebuilt, and the long Katrina diaspora.

Receipts, not rumors—maps, statutes, and court records—on how a “natural disaster” chose its victims long before landfall.

Content note: disaster, shootings, racial violence, displacement.

“No memo says poison the hood. But the paperwork tells a story. New episode live.”

On a bluff above the Missouri River, abolitionists, Wyandot leaders, and freedom seekers built a town that functioned like a doorway: step off the boat on this side, and slave-state Missouri couldn’t claim you. Quindaro was a free-state port, an Underground Railroad lifeline, home to Western University and a 1911 John Brown monument—then the money shifted, the charter was killed, and the place was allowed to sink into brush and rumor.

In this episode, we walk the rise, fall, and resurrection of Quindaro: from its intentional founding as an anti-slavery gateway, to decades of neglect, to the fights over landfills, ruins, funding, and who gets to tell the story now. With receipts from archaeologists, activists, churches, and local reporters, we ask a simple question: What does it mean when a town built as a door is almost erased from the map—and who’s responsible for reopening it?

Content note: mentions of slavery, attempted erasure of historic Black sites.