We've heard plenty about black marauders in New Orleans after Katrina, but not so much about anti-black violence by whites

It seems New Orleans has an even better-kept secret. Within the historic (and now largely black) Algiers district of New Orleans -- set off from most of the city proper by being across the river, and principally accessible by ferry -- lies the nearly all-white enclave of Algiers Point, scene of white anti-black violence researched by A. C. Thompson.

"Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply 'didn't belong.'"

-- A. C. Thompson, in "Katrina's Hidden War," in the Jan. 5 Nation

by Ken

"The existence of this little army isn't a secret, " says Thompson. "In 2005 a few newspaper reporters wrote up the group's activities in glowing terms in articles that showed up on an array of pro-gun blogs; one Cox News story called it "the ultimate neighborhood watch." A shooting victim, Donnell Harrington "recounted his ordeal in Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke."

However, Thompson continues, "until now no one has ever seriously scrutinized what happened in Algiers Point during those days, and nobody has asked the obvious questions. Were the gunmen, as they claim, just trying to fend off looters? Or does Herrington's experience point to a different, far uglier truth?"

Thompson spent 18 months investigating, with support from the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and New America Media.

I tracked down figures on all sides of the gunfire, speaking with the shooters of Algiers Point, gunshot survivors and those who witnessed the bloodshed. I interviewed police officers, forensic pathologists, firefighters, historians, medical doctors and private citizens, and studied more than 800 autopsies and piles of state death records. What emerged was a disturbing picture of New Orleans in the days after the storm, when the city fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed.

Herrington, [his cousin Chris] Collins and [his friend Marcel] Alexander's experience fits into a broader pattern of violence in which, evidence indicates, at least eleven people were shot. In each case the targets were African-American men, while the shooters, it appears, were all white.

And, in case you were wondering, none of them were punished. There appears to have been no investigation of the shooting of Herrington, Collins, and Alexander.

Lance Hill, executive director of Tulane University's Southern Institute for Education and Research, told Thompson:

"By and large, I think the white mentality is that these people are exempt -- that even if they committed these crimes, they're really exempt from any kind of legal repercussion,. It's sad to say, but I think that if any of these cases went to trial, and none of them have, I can't see a white person being convicted of any kind of crime against an African-American during that period.

"You can trace the origins of the Algiers Point militia to the misfortune of Vinnie Pervel," Thompson writes. The 52-year-old white building contractor and real estate entrepreneur had his Ford van carjacked by an African-American man who attacked him with a hammer. "Vowing to prevent further robberies," Thompson writess, "Pervel and his neighbors began amassing an arsenal. Pervel says he also feared for the safety of his mother, in her 70s. 'We thought we would be dead. We thought we were doomed.'"

And so Pervel and his comrades set about fortifying the area. One resident gave me video footage of the leafy barricades the men constructed to keep away outsiders. Others told me they created a low-tech alarm system, tying aluminum cans and glass bottles together and stringing them across the roads at ankle height. The bottles and cans would rattle noisily if somebody bumped into them, alerting the militia.

Pervel and his armed neighbors point to the very real chaos that was engulfing the city and claim they had no other choice than to act as they did. They paint themselves as righteous defenders of property, a paramilitary formation protecting their neighborhood from opportunistic thieves. "I'm not a racist," Pervel insists. "I'm a classist. I want to live around people who want the same things as me."

In some ways the story is most notable for what Thompson couldn't find out. It's not surprising that official records of that period are spotty and incomplete, but he had to sue the coroner, who in violation of the law refused to make available what records he did have. Those records proved almost useless, but he was shocked to find out that the New Orleans Police Department was only investigating three shooting incidents from the period. The NOPD wasn't exactly forthcoming either.

It's not a pretty story, but can we really allow it to simply pass unaccounted for? Even Vinnie Pervel is surprised that nobody except Thompson has ever come to ask him about a shooting that took place a few feet from his house (in which he says he had no involvement). "I'm surprised. If that was my son, I'd want to know who shot him."

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