There is no doubt progress was being made prior to the storm. Even in New Orleans, the black middle class has been steadily emerging. City government in Orleans was firmly under black control. Many blacks entered the professions and held good jobs in government and business across the city. New Orleans East, Gentilly and even the Lower Ninth Ward were filled with black owner occupied homes. Eastover was New Orleans first upscale majority black gated subdivision.

But progress was not universal nor even common. Most black New Orleanians still lived in rented properties or government subsidized housing. Many were not particularly expensive nor well tended. Public schools were overwhelming black and consistently produced the worst results in Louisiana. Far below national norms, they saw a sixty-five percent  (65%) failure rate on the annual high stakes LEAP tests. Some schools had failure rates in the mid 90% range. All but seven of the 118 public schools in the city performed below state averages. Crime even in the good neighborhoods was far above national and state norms. Around the public housing projects despair, drug abuse, murder and property crime was intense. Nearly twenty percent of the city's black population lived in public housing either in the big projects or in subsidized Section 8 housing.

What then other than their sometimes distinctive skin color, what was making it so hard for blacks to gain traction in America and particularly in New Orleans?