RootsWeb: Melungeon-L Evacuated Creoles vow to maintain culture

RootsWeb: Melungeon-L Evacuated Creoles vow to maintain culture: "Evacuated Creoles vow to maintain culture


GILLIAN FLACCUS

Associated Press
9/7/05

LOS ANGELES -
Wilda Little speaks Creole with her cousin two or three times a week and
listens to her favorite zydeco bands on aging vinyl records, but that's about as
close as the Louisiana transplant gets these days to the Creole culture of
her youth.

'My children never learned Creole,' said Little, 80. 'They were never
interested in that.'

Her culture has been in a long decline here, as zydeco dance halls shut down
and native Creole speakers died. And now, Hurricane Katrina has dealt these
remote outposts of shrimp gumbo and the zydeco two-step a devastating blow.

Creoles who live thousands of miles from the bayous of southern Louisiana
suddenly find themselves uncertain ambassadors for a city - and a way of life -
that is endangered.

'We're a part of that culture of New Orleans and now it's gone,' said
Norwood Clark Jr., the owner of Uncle Darrow's Creole and Cajun restaurant in
Marina del Rey."