Dolores D. Parker

Location of Interview
Collection Name

Hurricane Betsy Survivors Oral History Project

Description

Nilima Mwendo conducted these interviews in 2003 with residents of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward who survived Hurricane Betsy when it made landfall on September 9, 1965. Interviews focus on the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood from the 1930s and 40s, when the area was only partially developed and rural, to the early 2000s. Interviewees discuss their experiences during the hurricane, the evacuation of the neighborhood, disaster relief from the state and federal government and Red Cross, and the hardships they and other residents encountered in the months and years they spent rebuilding their homes and lives after they returned to the neighborhood. Interviewees describe the neighborhood before Betsy and discuss changes in the community after the storm. Several interviewees also discuss social activism and advocacy for the neighborhood in the 1960s and 70s.

To browse this collection and others, please visit the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History: https://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/lsu-thwcoh

Interviewer
Date of Interview
12-02-2003
Transcribers

Transcriber: Teresa Bergen 
Auditor: David Juneau 
Editor: Erin Hess

Audio
Supplemental Material
Biographical Sketch

Dolores D. Parker was born in Bayou Goula, La. The daughter of a minister, she grew up moving around the state. She graduated from Clark High School in New Orleans then earned a B.A. degree in elementary education from Dillard. She taught in New Orleans public schools for 32 years and taught reading in an adult education program. She is the mother of four children: Raymond, Raynelle, Raynette, and Raynard. Raymond, who also contributes to this interview, is her oldest child.

Scope and Content Note
Parker describes her childhood in various cities in Louisiana, attending her segregated African-American high school in New Orleans in the 1950s, her positions at various schools in New Orleans in the 1960s through 1991, raising four children on her own after she divorced her husband, the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood before and after Hurricane Betsy, her family's experiences during the hurricane, and their rebuilding process.

Terms Governing Use: Physical rights are retained by the LSU Libraries. Copyright is retained by interviewer and Louisiana State University in accordance with U.S. copyright laws.


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