The Katrina diaspora is the hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians scattered across the country after the levees failed in 2005. Many came home. A lot of them didn't. Twenty years and change later, there are whole communities of New Orleanians living in Houston, Atlanta, Baton Rouge and Dallas who still cook red beans on Monday and still call it home.
We think about them a lot, because they're a big part of why Dirty Coast exists the way it does. One of our best-known designs was born in the evacuation. More on that in a minute.
What Happened
Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005. The storm itself wasn't what emptied the city. The federal levee system failed, and about 80% of New Orleans flooded, as Axios reported for the twentieth anniversary.
People left however they could. Some drove out ahead of the storm. Others were rescued from rooftops and attics days later, then flown or bused to wherever there was room. Families were split across states. Across the Gulf Coast, roughly 1.5 million people were forced from their homes, according to sources compiled on Wikipedia's page on Katrina displacement. The Houston Astrodome became a shelter for thousands.
The Numbers
The Data Center, the New Orleans research group that has tracked the city's recovery since the storm, has the population figures. Orleans Parish had 484,674 residents in April 2000. The 2010 Census counted 343,829. By 2020, the city had climbed back to 383,997. The most recent estimate, for 2025, is 362,154.
Those are big numbers, and they hide the people inside them. The Data Center's analysis of the 2010 Census found that the city had lost 118,526 African American residents since 2000. The diaspora was not evenly spread. It fell hardest on Black New Orleanians and on the neighborhoods that took the worst of the water.
Where People Went
Elizabeth Fussell, a sociologist at Brown University who used Census and other government records to follow residents from 2005 through 2019, has done some of the most careful work on this. Her findings, reported by The Advocate and Axios, show a diaspora that shifted over time.
- Baton Rouge and Atlanta took in the largest numbers early on. Over the years, both lost some of those new residents as people moved again or came home.
- Houston and Dallas kept gaining Katrina migrants in the years after 2005. Axios called Houston one of the places where a temporary refuge turned into a permanent home.
- Black New Orleanians were displaced to Atlanta, Houston and Dallas at more than twice the rate of non-Black residents, according to Fussell's work as reported by The Advocate.
- By 2019, about 31% of affected New Orleanians were still living somewhere outside the metro area, per Axios.
There's a flip side too. The Advocate reported that more than 80% of Black New Orleanians had come back to the metro area at some point by 2019. Coming home wasn't always permanent, and leaving wasn't always permanent either. People went back and forth for years, which anybody who lived through it will tell you.
Twenty Years of Being From Somewhere Else
Twenty years is long enough to build a whole life somewhere. Kids who were evacuated as toddlers are grown now, with Texas or Georgia accents. Their parents have careers and church families in cities they never planned to live in. Plenty of them still have a second line playing somewhere in their heads.
That's the thing about the diaspora that numbers can't really get at. You can leave New Orleans and it doesn't leave you. People in exile organize their own Carnival parties and hunt down Leidenheimer bread. They watch Saints games in bars full of other New Orleanians. They teach their kids to say "where y'at," even if the kids roll their eyes.
The Sticker From Lafayette
This is where we come in. During the evacuation, Blake Haney, who founded Dirty Coast, was in Lafayette like a lot of New Orleanians. At the Mello Joy coffeehouse there, he sketched a phrase on a sticker: "Be A New Orleanian, Wherever You Are."
It was an idea for people who didn't know when they could go home. It said you could carry the city with you. It still says that. The design became one of our best-known shirts, and a sticker in a car window or a shirt on someone in an airport became a way for displaced New Orleanians to recognize each other. We wrote more about where the phrase came from in its own post.
A lot of what we make speaks to the same feeling. The NOLA X design takes an X, a shape a lot of New Orleanians still connect to the search markings painted on flooded houses, and makes it a pledge that we're not going anywhere. And Cooking Up A Storm, the cookbook of Times-Picayune recipes lost and found after Katrina, is about holding on to what the water tried to take.
Staying Connected From Away
If you're part of the diaspora, or you love someone who is, here are some ways people stay tied to home:
- Listen to WWOZ, the community radio station, which streams online. It's the closest thing to a front porch on Frenchmen Street from a thousand miles away.
- Find other New Orleanians where you are. Saints bars and church groups are a good start.
- Keep the calendar. Red beans on Monday, king cake after Twelfth Night, crawfish in spring, snowballs all summer.
- Come home when you can, even if it's just for Jazz Fest or a family reunion.
And if you're shopping for someone who left, our guide to gifts for someone who misses New Orleans was written with them in mind.
Katrina Diaspora: FAQ
Where did people from New Orleans go after Katrina?
Large numbers went to Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. Research by Brown University sociologist Elizabeth Fussell found Baton Rouge and Atlanta took in the most residents early on, while Houston and Dallas kept gaining Katrina migrants in later years.
How many people never returned to New Orleans after Katrina?
By 2019, about 31% of New Orleanians affected by the storm were still living outside the metro area, according to Fussell's research as reported by Axios. Orleans Parish's population was 484,674 in 2000 and an estimated 362,154 in 2025, per The Data Center.
What does "Be A New Orleanian, Wherever You Are" mean?
It's a phrase Dirty Coast founder Blake Haney sketched on a sticker in Lafayette during the Katrina evacuation. It means you can carry the city with you wherever life takes you.
Leave a comment
All comments are moderated before being published.
This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.