Do You Know What it Means is a collaborative, educational effort designed to help the public better understand what life was like in New Orleans before the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. Our mission is to collect the untold stories of the people of New Orleans by chronicling and preserving them in an accessible and public digital archive comprised of collected photographs, videos, family histories, interviews and other artifacts. The archive will result in a virtual representation of New Orleans that will in turn help bring a divided community back together.
Do You Know What it Means places an emphasis on what has been lost - from the objects that connect people between generations to the cultural and social fabric of everyday life Ð as a way of documenting and sharing the unique culture of New Orleans. Most important, the project and digital archive enable those whose lives were affected by this disaster to be proactive in rebuilding, preserving and sharing their family histories.
The first phase of this project focuses on the Fazendeville group, a small community from New Orleans that has been displaced twice in its history. The first time was in 1964 when the National Park Service obtained their land, located directly on the Chalmette battlefield of the Battle of New Orleans. Some of the families in the group relocated to the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which was eventually severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina and remains largely uninhabitable today.
In subsequent phases of this project, other groups and geographic areas of New Orleans will be identified and chronicled to demonstrate the city's social, cultural and racial diversity.