Summary: Movement I [Chapter V: Short End, Long Street – Chapter VII: The Crown]

In 1961, Ivory Mae bought what was then a green shotgun house with the money from Webb’s life insurance policy. It needed work. Situated in what was at the time mostly a swamp, the Yellow House was on the short end of Wilson Avenue, near the highway. A few other houses shared one side of the street, with a trailer park on the other. There were grand plans for developing New Orleans East, which the wealthy new landowners saw as a frontier offering opportunity for lucrative city expansion. Newspaper articles glowed with the possibilities. Ivory Mae moved in with her new family, planted the yard with flowers, and took pride in decorating the interior. After days as a groundskeeper and maintenance worker at NASA, Simon enjoyed throwing parties in the backyard. He and Ivory Mae loved to entertain and were proud of their home. The children enjoyed plenty of free time roaming outside.

In September 1965, in the middle of the night, the family was awakened by Hurricane Betsy. Water rushed in the door they opened to flee. Carrying the smallest children, the adults waded through water up to their waists as the older children swam to safety. 160,000 homes were flooded as the storm surged through poorly maintained levees and up navigational canals built to facilitate industry. The governor promised change and denied responsibility, and afterward, the development of New Orleans continued.

Everything in the house was ruined, but the family set to work repairing as best they could. Simon built an addition on the back of the house. It included a second story to house the male children and an additional bathroom. To save money, Simon cut corners and left some projects unfinished, like the staircase to the addition. Ivory Mae set up a sewing station in the kitchen and made all their clothes. The couple had more children together.

By the 1970s, the dream of New Orleans had failed to be realized. Residents complained about chronic drainage problems. White flight began, and the area became majority Black. Karen, Sarah’s sister, was hit by a car while crossing the highway. The newly desegregated school discriminated against its Black students. Although Sarah’s older brother, Michael, was highly intelligent, a teacher gave him a failing grade on a perfect test, and he quit trying. The neighborhood was divided into gangs, and some of the Broom boys fought on the streets. Deborah, Sarah’s eldest sister, was married in the backyard of the Yellow House, and it was the first time Ivory Mae hesitated to have people in her home out of feelings of shame.

Analysis: Movement I [Chapter V: Short End, Long Street – Chapter VII: The Crown]

A shotgun house describes a floor plan and style of architecture most common in New Orleans but also found in other parts of the North American Southeast. This distinctly Black style of architecture, with a single story and a gabled front porch, makes use of small, narrow lots. This style of house is long and thin, with two or more rooms connected without a hallway. Residents must pass through each room to get into the next. It gets its name from the idea that a bullet fired from a gun at the front door would go straight through the home and out the back door without hitting anything. The Yellow House is a shotgun house, which is why when Simon makes a rectangular addition to the back of the house, the author describes the new shape of the home as an L.

Hurricane Betsy and the lack of proper response to it predicted Katrina and set the stage for the destruction of the Yellow House and, to a large extent, New Orleans East. City leaders knew exactly how levee failures and storm surges led to flooding of specific areas, and although they made promises that such a disaster would never happen again, necessary changes were not made. Because of government’s refusal to act on what they learned from Betsy, together with long-standing policies in New Orleans East, the disaster of Katrina “was practically predetermined,” as a critic in Kirkus Reviews observes. The failed promise of New Orleans East and its gradual decline paralleled that of the Yellow House itself. The shift from hope to resignation and embarrassment felt by the Broom family about their home was a direct result of that decline.