Utah was a world away for these New Orleanians. But after Katrina, it still became home – USA Today

SALT LAKE CITY – Curtis Pleasant remembers wading through the water, chest deep, screaming and searching. He had to find his father and extended family. Head on swivel, looking, praying. He had to make sure his loved ones were safe. That they were not dead.
It felt hopeless.
He wondered if during this journey – feet cut by things he couldn’t identify in the murky water, bodies floating by, fellow New Orleanians, young and old, also screaming and searching – whether he’d survive.
Pleasant, 65, lived in a duplex in the Third Ward, also known as the Third District. Musical creatives such as Louis Armstrong, Dr. John, Juvenile, Master P, Big Freedia, Birdman and C-Murder hailed from there.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, no one was playing jazz, bringing that nasty funk or rapping. They were fighting for their lives. The area was hit heavily by flooding and widespread destruction because the Mississippi River attaches at the mouth of the ward. As levees erupted, storm waters easily flowed in.
“I’m getting chills thinking about it,” Pleasant told me last week. “I try not to think about it no more. It hurts. I am done with it. I don’t want to see it on TV. I don’t want to remember it at all.”
Twenty years of trauma – that’s what Pleasant and hundreds of thousands of others still face. At least those who survived. Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 1 million people across the Gulf Coast – the largest climate-forced migration of Americans since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Seventy percent of all occupied housing in New Orleans − 134,000 houses and apartments − were destroyed or damaged. New Orleans’ population dropped by more than 120,000 after the storm. Nearly 1,400 lives were lost.
Yet nearly 2,000 miles away, in one of America’s deserts, lives were reborn. New homes established. A new sense of belonging discovered.
I’m sitting here, staring at these majestic mountains that in the summer can appear brown, blue, green, gold or gray depending on the time of day or how the sun hits them. The sun itself is brutal, as are the 100-degree-plus temperatures.
But the sunflowers are in full bloom. They dot front yards and gardens everywhere here, standing tall and tilting toward the light.
They serve as a symbol: resilient, strong, capable of growth even in barren conditions.
Roughly 600 New Orleans residents took refuge in Utah after Katrina, descending on the city on Sept. 3, 2005. They were put on military planes and commercial flights having no idea where they were headed.
But they were headed away from the floodwaters. That’s what mattered. Away from a filthy Superdome and Convention Center where they had been holed up for days. Away from the death and destruction they had witnessed.
Some arrived in wheelchairs and needed help leaving the planes, particularly the elderly. They had the clothes on their backs and trash bags filled with the few belongings they were able to salvage. They were greeted by religious and political leaders at the airport, a sight that was welcoming but also confusing.
Where were they? Utah? Where’s that? Who lived there? And what were they supposed to do there?
This was happening all across the country, of course, as states offered assistance and housing to the displaced. But Utah was different. Utah wasn’t Texas. Utah wasn’t Georgia. Or Mississippi or Alabama.
These people had just been forced to leave behind a city with a 67% African-American population.
“Utah? We didn’t know nothing about Utah,” Pleasant told me. “But what a blessing it was.”
About half of the evacuees stayed for a few weeks before finding their way back to Louisiana or other places, mostly in the South, where family and friends could take them in. The other half remained in Utah for months, even years.
Many were initially housed at Camp W. G. Williams, a Utah National Guard barracks in Bluffdale, about 25 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Others stayed even longer. Some never left.
Pleasant and his wife, Gwendolyn, didn’t move back to New Orleans until 2020, amid a global pandemic. There was a new granddaughter to meet and an ailing and aging father to tend to. New, joyful life. And a life on the brink of ending. His father died of heart failure about a year ago.
But even now, he still thinks of his time here. And if he had his way, he never would have returned to New Orleans.
The pictures from Hurricane Katrina still haunt me. They are seared into that part of the brain that won’t let you forget certain images, even as much as you’d like to – like the airplanes flying into the World Trade Center’s twin towers on 9/11.
I was a local reporter in Detroit at the time. Journalists at the Detroit Free Press all pitched in the day and evening the storm surged, working overtime to report what we could, obviously looking for Detroit or Michigan connections to the devastation.
Finally able to shower and lie in bed, I turned on the television from the comfort of my home. It was late, but I needed to see what was happening beyond all the news stories I had read. I watched as bodies floated. I watched as people took refuge on their roofs, desperately waving T-shirts and shouting for help. I watched as people packed in the Superdome, hot, tired, hungry and homeless.
I cried and cried and cried, obsessively flipping from station to station, network to network. This was my country, my America. And one of its brightest jewels was under water. I remember thinking over and over: How many people are going to die?
In Utah, the Rev. France Davis was watching the same footage, heartbroken and praying hard for those same people. A couple of days later, Davis got a call from then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. He explained that Utah was taking in some of Katrina’s victims, and Huntsman invited Davis to help greet the evacuees when they touched down in Salt Lake City.
In the 1960s, Davis joined the Civil Rights Movement and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, fighting with every step for voting rights for African Americans. He knows racism up close and recognized that Huntsman was worried about the optics.
“He said he didn’t want the people coming here from Louisiana to just see a sea of whiteness,” Davis recalls Huntsman telling him. “I remember that they had everything that they owned in a plastic bag for the most part.”
As pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, the largest African-American church in Utah, Davis and his congregants would become a beacon for so many of the displaced, those who had lost almost everything but their lives and possibly needed to find God.
And food. Shelter. Jobs. Mental health services. Schools for the kids. Help connecting with relatives still in New Orleans or those who had been evacuated to other cities. Religious support. Transportation.
Davis assigned four church employees and volunteers – including an evacuee he hired – to work full time to provide that heavy lifting. But they also offered lighthearted respites, hosting seafood boils and Mardi Gras-like events to make the Louisianans feel at home.
Lost and found.
Calvary Baptist Church, where Davis served as pastor for more than 45 years, welcomed about 100 new congregants after Katrina. Now he can think of only two people who are still in Salt Lake City and are still members.
It would be a fool’s errand to believe there wasn’t racial strife among Utahns and its newest inhabitants. Black Louisianans were beginning to settle in enclaves around the city and within Salt Lake County after months of living on the National Guard base. They were starting to find jobs. But many Salt Lake City residents weren’t accustomed to seeing Black people in their neighborhoods, or working with them side-by-side at their place of employment. Davis remembers hearing the whispers of concern.
Why are they staying here? How are their kids going to get along with our kids?
I’d call it the whispers of whiteness. Whispers of privilege. Whispers of racism. All still lingering today in one form or another.
“Salt Lake was not ready for the influx,” Davis explained to me. “The number of African Americans that were here was relatively small, so to get people coming in, bringing their culture, their religion and their beliefs – Salt Lake was not ready for it.”
What do we think we know about New Orleans?
Big, bold flavors. Loud, live music. Boastful and beautiful architecture. Dancing in the streets. The city has a culture like no other in the United States.
What do we think we know about Salt Lake City?
In one word: Mormonism. Maybe throw in some stellar skiing spots.
Of course it’s much more than these two things. The Salt Lake City I visited last month has a vibrant downtown dining and nightlife scene. Bustling parks. Friday festivals with live music and food trucks.
In fact, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up only about 50% of Utah residents who identify as Christian, according to a 2023-24 religious landscape study by Pew Research Center.
Still, it’s known as one of America’s more culturally and politically conservative regions. In recent years, the city itself has become more progressive, particularly in embracing the LGBTQ+ community.
But look on a map and you’ll see that familiar dot of blue surrounded by a sea of red.
Before Katrina, Black people made up less than 1% of Utah’s population; 1.9% in the city. Black people and Black Mormons were barred from sacred buildings, temples and practices until 1978. Black men also were banned from ordained priesthood.
And it was one of the last states in the union to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a named and paid holiday in his honor – 14 years after King’s birthday was made a national holiday by federal law.
Not exactly the most inclusive history.
I wanted to explore race relations in Salt Lake City with Jeanetta Williams, president for the NAACP’s Salt Lake branch for more than 30 years, as well as president of the NAACP tri-state Conference for Idaho, Nevada and Utah.
Williams, who is originally from Oklahoma, lived in Idaho before moving to Utah in 1988. Almost immediately, she knew what her mission would be: Get Martin Luther King Jr. Day to be called just that. Until 2000 – yes, 2000 – it was called Utah’s Human Rights Day.
For years, state legislators refused to even consider a name change. Williams kept lobbying – chamber officials, local elected officials, religious leaders, business owners and, of course, state lawmakers.
“Instead of honoring one man, they wanted to honor human rights in general – that was their thinking behind it,” Williams told me. “It took a lot of hard work to convince them otherwise.”
Today, the Utah NAACP mostly fields housing and work discrimination and police misconduct complaints. Same as 20 years ago, when some Katrina evacuees navigated such injustices.
Williams can remember seeing them. Downtrodden. Bewildered. Obviously still in shock. Williams had spent the night before with a small army of women getting together toiletries and basic necessities to hand out as the evacuees were shuttled by bus to the barracks.
“They were happy to see us,” Williams told me. “They had no idea what Salt Lake was like or anything. In fact, they didn’t even know that they were coming to Salt Lake, some of them, until they were already on the plane. And then the pilot announced that they were on their way to Salt Lake City, Utah.
“It was a culture shock for them coming to a place like Salt Lake, which is very, very White,” she said. “But the people that came here from Louisiana felt that the people here in Utah were very kind to them.”
It was a spirit of generosity, one that can and should supersede racial animus. Treat your neighbors with kindness. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you have it to give, give it. For every person whispering white, there were 10 more standing at the ready who wanted to make the transition as painless as possible for those arriving from the Crescent City.
“I knew that they would welcome them because I worked with a lot of the different groups and with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the past on different issues,” Williams told me. “And they were always very forthcoming about trying to help in whatever way they could.”
Williams recalls a single mother with two girls younger than 5. She was particularly distraught, worrying about how to care for them without any family support nearby or any money. She had to find a job. She had to work. She had to provide. Yet she had no idea where to begin – or how to begin.
“One of the people with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had an empty home available, and she furnished it for that family,” Williams told me. “People would bring the little girls books, bicycles and things they could play with in the yard.”
These days, Pleasant goes to the gym, sings in his church choir and dotes on his four grandchildren, including the youngest, whom he affectionately calls “Butterball.”
See, Pleasant didn’t just find a home in Utah. He found sobriety. It was here where he was able to break his wicked crack addiction.
He had no plans to get clean, though he lied to his wife for years and said he wanted to. Once in Salt Lake City he had no means to get drugs, no access to drug dealers. And no money. The Rev. Davis met him, asked him to come to church. Counseled him on being in his right mind, especially right now. Pleasant felt less so as the withdrawal symptoms hit. He prayed them away, he says.
Pleasant got a car. Found a job working at a glass company, installing little glass stones into bigger installations that would be used in office buildings. Tedious work. He loved it. It was a way for him to focus instead of thinking about drugs.
Count them. One, two, three.
One blessing at a time.
Each stone could eventually become a dollar in his pocket, he’d think. Each stone represented a better year than the last. He counted those glass stones for four years.
Then he was hired by a company to cut round drain holes into newly poured asphalt. How many holes did he cut a day?
Count them. One, two, three.
One more day without drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. One slayed demon at a time.
Pleasant returned where he had cut feet in murky water. Where he had to search for his loved ones. Where he lost so much.
“I love Utah – the mountains, the people, the atmosphere – everything,” Pleasant told me. “Hopefully one day maybe we’ll save up enough money to move back there.”
Salt Lake City changed him. Of course, he’s not celebrating the tragedy that befell him and so many others after Katrina. But he is grateful for being able to erase the storm of despair within himself.
That would have likely never happened if he hadn’t found hope − and home − in Salt Lake City.
Suzette Hackney is a national columnist. Reach her on X:@suzyscribe