“Back yo ass up man. How you tryna tell me we weren’t ten yards from the touchdown line?” This was the first sign of success that I found as I went out to observe young people in the Milneburg neighborhood. Milneburg is in the northern section of New Orleans, near Lake Pontchartrain, and it is bounded by Leon C. Simon Boulevard, Elysian Fields Avenue, Filmore Avenue, and Peoples Avenue. I had been riding my bike leisurely throughout the interior of the neighborhood, but it was not until I came to the intersection of Filmore and Music Street that I found anyone. The people playing football were a group of energetic teenagers on a field behind the old Milne Boys Home. The Milne Boys Home is a deserted, forlorn, yet impressive structure which once housed ‘delinquent’ boys and offered social service programs and athletics (Saulny)[1]. The building was damaged by flooding during Hurricane Katrina and has not been reopened yet. At one time, the giant expanse of open space surrounding Milne and the playground across the street might have been teeming with jubilant, playing children. Today, however, the sounds of the eight kids playing football and the quick succession of ‘wops’ from the bounce music in a passerby’s car were all that kept the field and playground from being engulfed in a sad silence.

Making my way over to the playground, I sat down and watched this one swing sway in the wind, squeaking for attention. It would be another twenty minutes before a lone girl and her father came to the playground and finally gave the swings some company. Though there was no one for the slide or the jungle gym, one child’s laughter was a welcome relief. It was dismaying to see a playground lie fallow on such a beautiful weekend evening. Riding on, I saw passing cars, barking dogs, and grown-ups conversing on their porches. What were missing in Milneburg’s public theatre of streets were children playing outside on the blocks.  Of course other things were missing as well: things like signs on shut-down businesses and windows on boarded up houses—things like people in general.

Milneburg, like the entire city of New Orleans, lost a substantial amount of its population in recent years. These demographic losses stem from both Hurricane Katrina and the decades-long pattern of population decline within the city. Since 2000, the overall number of people in Milneburg declined by 39.6% while the number of people under 18 years old declined by 43.9% (U.S Census 2000; U.S. Census 2010[2]). Across all of Orleans Parish, the number of adults has decreased by 24% while the number of children has decreased by 43% from 2000 to 2010 (Plyer[3]). Official Census data habitually undercount the number of children and the number of minorities in the country—an important point since 87.6% of the people in Milneburg in 2010 are Black (U.S Census 2010; Plyer). However, if the undercount is comparable from Census to Census then the trends are clear even if the numbers are not completely accurate. There are much less children in New Orleans now than there were in 2000.

Closer to the center of Milneburg, I passed a yard with a family inside of it. They were standing around fawning over a young person, approximately 6 or 7 years old, as he zoomed round and round the yard on what appeared to be a brand new miniature toy motorcycle. Every time this young boy neared the exit of the yard an older gentleman would admonish the child not to drive outside. After all, no one wanted the boy to get hurt by accidentally riding out into the street and getting hit by a passing vehicle. While the patriarch’s advice most likely came from a practical concern for the boy’s safety, it seemed emblematic of larger issues facing residents of Milneburg. Inside the home, one was likely to be around people who cared about you and would protect you if need be. While a strong sense of community might have offered a person these same protections outside the home in the past, many communities have been damaged by Katrina’s floodwaters and the negligence or inefficiencies of the city, state, and federal government. With so many of the city’s residents (the bedrock of New Orleans’ communities) displaced, perhaps it might just be easier to keep an eye on one’s children by keeping them inside more often.