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Tavis: Say it ain't so, say it ain't so. Night five, the final night of this wonderful series all week long, "Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward" courtesy of the fine work of Academy Award winner, Jonathan Demme. So it's the last night. What do you have for us tonight?

Jonathan Demme: Yeah, but we're going to do our sequel next year. Don't forget (laughter).

Tavis: I'm looking forward to that, yes (laughter).

Demme: Tonight, Tavis, is the most devastated neighborhood of all, as everybody knows, that part of the Lower 9th Ward where the barge that had been left unfastened broke through the levy and brought a tsunami into the neighborhood near the Florida Avenue Bridge and literally swept homes off their foundations several blocks. Then the same thing happened with Rita again. This is such a moving place and no one was able to come back to that place.

When we came down for the first time in January 2006, the only humanity down there was this little blue house that was the outpost of Common Ground. That was a volunteer organization created very much by many people, but by Malik Rahim, who refused to accept that people couldn't come back even to the hardest hit neighborhood and he wanted to demonstrate that.

Tavis: All week long, stories of courage, conviction and commitment. Tonight no different. It is night five, our final night of "Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward" courtesy of Academy Award winner, Jonathan Demme. Here we go.

David W. Reed: It was like a Monday. Yeah, it was that Monday. I came home from work and I'm sitting there looking at the news. I'm like this hurricane is passing the tip of Florida and it's passing on Highway One. I told my girl, "That hurricane's coming straight for us." She was like, "How you can tell the hurricane way down there?" I'm like, "The hurricane is coming for us. If it passes below the highway in Florida, it's coming this way." She's like, "Nah, we ain't going nowhere."

So Tuesday when I got up, she was like, "What are you doing?" I was on the computer and I'm getting a rental car. We're getting out of here. I'm not staying. So I'm looking and looking and looking. She's like, "Oh, I'm going to school."

So by Wednesday when she seen how massive it was and that it was coming our way, she got up to go to school and she looked at me and said, "Did you reserve that car?" So I stopped at my brother's. "Oh, I ain't going nowhere. I'm going to stay here. I ain't running from no hurricane."

My sister was the same. "We ain't running from no hurricane. We been here forty or fifty years. I ain't run from a hurricane since and I ain't running from one now." I went, "Did you all look at the news? Did you all see the size of this? The eye was three hundred miles wide. Did you see that? This ain't no ordinary hurricane. We done went through Andrew. This ain't no regular hurricane."

No, they just stubborn. They ain't leaving. When it came, I called and I called and I kept calling and the phones went out. When the phones went out, I got nervous, I got scared, but I had the kids with me and I had my girlfriend with me and I had to be like, you know, the strong, big man, but inside I was like a weak baby in a corner crying right about then.

Also my mom didn't want to go, so since my mom stayed, my brother stayed and they all decided to go my house on the Plaza and that was the blessing I had because my brother that actually stayed, when the water came, it was like directly behind their house.

So they was outside packing, getting stuff in the car, getting ready to leave. Like he said, there was no rain, there was no wind. The wind had calmed down and it wasn't raining, but it was drizzling. All of a sudden, they heard this boom and they said, "Okay, what was that?" and they're thinking transformer. Transformer done blew. Ain't nothing, just a transformer.

He said the next thing he knew, he was walking in water. The water just kept going up and came faster and came more and got higher and it was just coming. He said the next thing you know, he ran upstairs and got in the attic.

Everybody around here, everybody knew you keep an ax in your attic in case you got to break out the roof. Everybody knows that. So he had two axes in the attic in case he had to break through two roofs because he didn't know old the house had been there.

So they're in the attic. He got his wife. He got him, his brother-in-law and his sister-in-law in the attic with him. Chopped out the roof and he said, by the time he got out the roof, the whole house moved. The house from the other street from flooding came and hit their house and moved it. The tree that is right there is the actual tree they hung in for eighteen hours. Four people hanging in a tree for eighteen hours.

I'm twenty-nine. I just made twenty-nine on January 4. My brother has to be at least ten years older than me and, if he tell this story, he sit there and cry like a baby because of how devastating it was. We both have been through a lot of things, but I actually don't tell the story no more.

Don't even try to relive it. It happened. No reason to keep, you know, dragging our clothes. But I have a lot of relatives, sisters, brothers, cousins, I had a whole lot of friends around, but I said we all have to get past it. It happened.

Barbara Lewis: I mean, you're sitting here. You're building a new home and you're looking at total devastation.

Robert Green, Sr.: No, I'm not looking at total devastation because you look at total devastation, that's what you see. I'm looking at the fact that Ms. Booker who lives at that slab right there is rebuilding our house. This guy who lives at the (unintelligible) has been sleeping in that house. Ms. Kennedy across the street wants to rebuild the house, so people want to come back.

Minnie Kennedy: So you're not going to be down here by yourself?

Green, Sr.: I'm down here right now by myself, but I'm not going to be down here by myself.

Kennedy: God is here with you, baby.

Al Johnson: You be fearful? You be fearful? Cause I always thought I was tougher than you (laughter).

Green, Sr.: Well, I know you are because look at you from the last time I see you. You looked (unintelligible) the last time I see you.

Johnson: Ain't I looking good?

Lewis: You looking a lot better, yeah. You know, he's probably accepting it more.

Green, Sr.: It wasn't that you looked bad, but you looking good. You know what I'm saying?

Johnson: I will settle for that. I will settle for that. Robert lost his mother, you know.

Lewis: You lost your mother in the storm?

Green, Sr.: And my granddaughter. My granddaughter died at four o'clock in the morning and my mother died about one o'clock in the afternoon. My mother's body was left on a house similar to that one. Her body was right there, 1617 Tennessee Street. I even gave them a satellite picture.

I put her on the roof of the house while we were all coming off of our roof trying to get onto the roof of that house. I put her up on the roof of the house and she fell in. While I turned around to pick up her sister and put her sister on the roof of the house, my sister Shaniya did, and her sister dived in and saved her sister. As you can imagine, in front of the house right here, the child swam to - actually was hanging in the water off the gutters because we couldn't pull ourselves out.

Johnson: How high was the water?

Green, Sr.: The water was 25 feet high. You could hardly see the other roofs. When that water came through like it did -

Johnson: - so like my house and your house was covered?

Green, Sr.: Yeah.

Lewis: 25 feet.

Green, Sr.: Enough to make you -

Johnson: - I wouldn't have wanted to be in that.

Green, Sr.: Yeah, well, we didn't have a choice. We didn't have a choice. Like I said, it was - he was on top of the roof too. He was in the house too.

Lewis: The feeling that you have when everybody else was looking at this for several weeks on television right after the storm went on, it's very different if you've been there and you've experienced one of these storms. The feeling from inside your heart, your emotions are just with these people because you've been there.

To see it, it's like surreal. It's like you can imagine what Vietnam must have been like. Al and I have been friends for a while. He lives right down the street. He's a musician and all of his memorabilia, all of his pictures, his keepsakes, he said he could not save one morsel of anything.

Malik Rahim: Hey, Roscoe, what's up, baby? What's up, Roscoe? How you doing? You look like you're doing much better. Yeah.

Melvin Jones, Jr.: The levy break happened right over here. They've fixed it now, but you can still see reminders of what's going on.

Rahim: That's amazing. It looks like they're living in that house.

Jones, Jr.: They are, they are. This is a group called Common Ground. A group of young people have come into town to help when they heard that the government was going to start taking peoples' land. They came in and they started helping us here.

Yvonne Wise: I'm from New Orleans, believe it or not. I'm a 9th Ward girl. Yes, I am. What can I say? I mean, these were the forerunners in actually helping people to try and gut houses out, to see that the houses weren't torn down before people could find their loved ones. I mean, they've just done so many wonderful things.

They're forerunners in trying to get a school opened up for the community. They just done everything wonderful. Feeding people, water, you name it. They've been instrumental in having it down to see the people were able to try at least to salvage some parts of their lives and Common Ground has been very instrumental in that. I'm really proud of Malik for forming an organization of that kind. I really am.

Rahim: Well, now, cut it out before you have me broken down (laughter).

Leon Vaughn: You say, well, well (laughter).

Jones, Jr.: You know about that, huh?

Vaughn: Yes sir, I know the man. I'm very acquainted with him.

Jones, Jr.: Where you from?

Vaughn: Right down here in the 9th Ward on Treacle (ph) Street.

Jones, Jr.: But what accent am I hearing?

Vaughn: The 9th Ward.

Jones, Jr.: Okay, okay.

Vaughn: Well, my path is from the country back in Louisiana.

Jones, Jr.: That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm hearing.

Vaughn: I'm been in this neighborhood since 1953. I was nine years old when my mother and father brought down here. We moved down here and they didn't have too many paved streets. They had just a street and you had to jump over a ditch. It looked like the country. But everybody out here was one. Everybody helped rear your children up.

Rahim: This area, the Lower 9th Ward, is one that's real dear to me. Many days, I used to be right here, never knowing that I was going to wind up over here, but that's where I used to be at before the hurricane because I had family that lived all up and down this street. This is where my father's family is from.

We used to spend, you know, so much time through here because one of the things that still, even though it's sixteen months later, depresses me to the degree that I won't come over here that much. It's because of the fact that, as I walk through here, I'm always reminded of how it was.

At this time of day, you would see children playing out here in the street. You would see a family or different people in their homes all up and down this block, sitting outside on good days, you know, and it was a community. It wasn't just a bunch of people living together.

Everybody knew each other and most people here had been staying here for at least fifty years or more. So it wasn't no idea that it was a transient community. These were people that, even though they might have been poor, they were God-fearing, working people that worked hard to obtain their home.

How you all doing? What you all been doing?

Kristin Caspar: Storm drains.

Rahim: All right, all right. Where you all coming from? I mean, what schools you all from?

Caspar: Swarthmore College.

Rahim: That's where?

Caspar: Just outside of Philadelphia.

Deanna Allen: I'm from Gilford College. We're all with Common Ground.

Rahim: All right, all right. What made you all decide to come down here and do this?

Allen: That's a complicated question.

Demme: This is Malik Rahim, the founder of Common Ground.

Caspar: Oh, glad to meet you. I've wanted to meet you for a while (laughter).

Rahim: Listen, I thank you for what you all are doing and the sacrifice that you're all making.

Allen: Well, thank you for organizing this.

Caspar: Yeah, it's really great. It's amazing.

Allen: It's truly an impact, right.

Rahim: What do you all think about the fact that the city and the state and the federal government refused to do anything to help here? That you all have to come out here and clean storm drains?

Caspar: I think it's ridiculous. I think they would be so much more efficient if they did help out and the fact that they're focusing on other things.

Rahim: Yeah. I thank you all for the sacrifice that you all are making, and it is making a difference.

Allen: It's worth it. It's good to go to a place and volunteer and actually feel like you're needed.

Lewis: This is Al Johnson, the famous author of "Carnival Time" (laughter).

Demme: An honor to meet you, Mr. Johnson. An honor to meet you.

Johnson: Same here, same here.

Lewis: He wrote that song in 1959.

Johnson: Well, that was going to be our next project. We were going to work on that to find out why I'm not getting any money on it or for it. She wants an autograph.

Demme: I don't blame her.

Johnson: What's your name?

Dionne: Dionne, D-i-o-n-n-e.

Johnson: You say that's one of your favorites, huh?

Dionne: Yes, it is.

Johnson: Have a little boy, then. Have a little boy.

Dionne: Thank you.

Johnson: (Singing) Did you know that was in there?

Dionne: No.

Johnson: (Singing) I looked out for us, but I still didn't get no money. We're going to get together more because I haven't been down here about two or three months. I hate to come down here. I feel bad and stuff. But it was great. You know, it's going to be all right. We're going to survive this. We're going to survive it.

Rahim: The government, and I'm talking about the local, state and federal government, you know, hasn't even acknowledged the work that we are doing. They refuse to even come out and try to assist us with anything pertaining to the work that we are doing and have done everything that they can to stop us.

I'd love to be able to work along with the government 'cause that's the first thing we did is ask them how can we volunteer to help. We was told that they didn't want no volunteers. The only thing we could do is leave the city and the government said they'll spend billions of dollars, but they can't offer a resident back here a respirator. They can't even offer them a hammer or a wheelbarrow, some of the basics.

And then they get mad on us because we are offering. We need to work to correct these ills, to make sure that this never happen nowhere else again. We could rebuild this city, but we can't rebuild it the way we're doing now, you know. The only way we could rebuild this city is by working together.

Resident: (Singing) We left here that Wednesday after the storm that hit on that Monday and we went straight to Lafayette, Louisiana. We stopped at Wal-Mart and the lady from church up there in Lafayette, she asked us to come eat at her church, which we did. When we went in, there was twenty-one of our family members and they said, "We're going to divide you off."

Another lady came up by the name of Ada Thomas and she said, "Well, no, let them all come by our house." We gave this lady $1100 to stay there two weeks and, in two weeks time, she told us we had to leave. We bought our own food, kept her house clean and everything, but God sits high and He looks for you. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord."

We left Lafayette and we went to Morgan City. Stayed in Morgan City, went to Harvey, Louisiana. Then at that time, some went north, south, east and west. I went back to Morgan City and I stayed in Morgan City from about October to when FEMA told us we had to get out of the hotels.

I came back to New Orleans. I was two days here in New Orleans and, in turn, they delivered me a trailer and that's where I'm staying at now, in a trailer. You can't be choosy because I could be out sleeping in a car, sleeping in an abandoned house. I'm grateful for whatever God has given me.

Dionne: And I was blessed after Katrina. I went to the Toyota Center looking for some Build-a-Bears for my girls. I met a very, very kind lady who told me to tell the kids to sit down while I fill out this job application, and I am a Houston public librarian.

My story is rather bittersweet because I was living in a home with four kids and going to grad school and no job and just barely making it with the help of my father. Katrina's bittersweet. At the same time, I miss home. At the same time, I love my new life. So I get a little melancholy when I come down. It's sad. It seems as though nothing has changed.

You know, we first tried to come here and there were houses in the middle of the street and debris everywhere. It's 2007. This happened August 2005. It seems as though the city would at least try to come back a little bit more.

I try to still support the city. I just would like to see some rebuilding of the homes and everything and see some of the same people come back. It's sad that, you know, people are still scattered all over the place.

Tavis: That's our show and our week from here in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Let me thank my friend, Jonathan Demme, and his terrific team of producers, editors and crew and, most of all, the wonderful people here in New Orleans.

The residents here still have a long way to go before their lives return to something even close to normal, but the spirit, good will and abiding faith we've seen here this week confirms for me what those of us who know and love New Orleans have always known. This neighborhood and this city will rise again and reclaim its place as one of the world's great multicultural jewels.

My special thanks also to Dr. Cornel West who made the sojourn with us and made this trip such a wonderful experience. Good night from New Orleans. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.