Radio & Podcasts

After Katrina

BBC Radio 4

November 2005

November 2005 For African-Americans, Hurricane Katrina has become a generation-defining catastrophe - a disaster in which the majority of victims were Black. But will anything change after Katrina?

Alvin Hall goes back to his roots on the Gulf Coast, an area badly devastated by the hurricane. These days, his job involves giving classes on investment markets to traders on Wall Street and, in the UK, he's probably best known for the BBC TV personal finance series, Your Money Or Your Life.

But Alvin's origins are very humble. He was born in the segregated South in the 1950s into a poor African American household. Having pulled himself out of poverty by getting a good education and working hard, his achievement epitomizes the American Dream.
In this personal journey, he travels to New Orleans and the Deep South to find out what other Americans think. What will be the long-term impact on the African-American community? Will a new spirit of protest emerge, reminiscent of the Civil Rights era? Will a new political activism develop? Or is the divide indelibly ingrained into the fabric of American life?