African American Angelenos have a historical bond to the black families seen waving on rooftops, crowds of desperate blacks packed together outside the Superdome and the bloated black bodies floating face down in the flood waters that inundated New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and communities.

Ties run deep to Louisiana, starting with a migration in the late 1800s. Black Pullman porters on the Southern Pacific Railroad, who talked about a golden land out west, sparked a mass movement of southern African Americans who were desperate to leave behind the South's apartheid enforced by Jim Crow laws.

Following World War II, many more blacks fled Louisiana and Mississippi to Southern California, looking for work in federally funded industries like aircraft manufacturing that promised good pay and benefits and, most important, the elimination of racial discrimination.

Many of these African Americans --- especially from New Orleans --- brought with them their rich Catholic tradition. Mostly they settled in South Los Angeles and quickly enriched parishes, including Holy Name of Jesus, Transfiguration and St. Lawrence of Brindisi.

In 1964, Doris Wilson, a college-educated, fifth-generation Catholic from New Orleans, wound up in L.A. with her husband and two small children because of segregation and job discrimination in the south. She became a licensed clinical social worker in the Los Angeles School District. But her ties to The Big Easy remained, with five of her 11 siblings still living there along with her 91-year-old mother and childhood friends.

The 69-year-old woman --- who has lived in Carson for many years, but still considers her first parish, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, her home church --- has spent much of the last 10 days desperately trying to stay in touch with loved ones back in Louisiana via phone and e-mail.

One brother, Dr. Warren Jones, a family physician who lives in Jackson, Miss., made a perilous 200-miles trip in his SUV right into the heart of destroyed New Orleans to rescue their mother, staying in a hotel, plus nine other relatives.

The family made it back to Jackson, but Wilson, the former psychiatric social worker, now fears for their mental health as well as for the physical health of her mother, who suffered a heart attack before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

"Oh, it's worse than you see on TV," Wilson lamented, based on reports she's been getting from her siblings and friends. "My brother, the medical doctor, said that when he got to New Orleans he saw people wandering around in a daze."

Wilson didn't need any more description to size up the situation.

"What's important is saving lives, helping people and getting them proper - and I mean proper - mental health and medical care," she said. "Because anyone going through that kind of thing is not OK. Post traumatic stress is definitely there.

"When I talked to a childhood friend, her tone of voice told me what these people had really gone through. She said, 'Doris, we have lost everything --- every, every, everything!'

"So I would recommend that every individual who has gone through this experience go someplace for help," she added. "It doesn't have to be long-term therapy. But you just need to get mind and body back in an equalized situation to function and go on."

Wilson herself was upset and incensed at the federal government's initial response to Katrina. She believed race and social class played a part in FEMA's (Federal Emergency Management Agency's) and the National Guard's poor performance when the hurricane hit Aug. 29 and later when water broke through the levees --- even though the violent storm had been carefully tracked for days before it slammed into the coastline.

"This Hurricane Katrina is a federal disaster," Wilson said. "The federal response was entirely too slow. That's what I'm hearing from the people I've been talking to. If you're sitting on your rooftop for days and you don't have anything to eat, why can't the federal government even do some food drops?"

She pointed out the number of federal facilities in Louisiana, including one housing illegal immigrants, another that acts as a backup for the space shuttle and a huge military base called Camp Polk. She said the National Guard, for the most part, wasn't at first available because it had been federalized for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We are a nation that has helped nations," Wilson mused. "We're one of the richest nations in the world. Look at how fast we helped out Tsunami victims.

"I'm not trying to be political," she said. "But something had to be contributing to the excessive delay in getting help. I don't want to believe it's political or racial. But you haven't shown me anything else."

'Not taking care of home, first'

Other members of St. Lawrence of Brindisi parish had similar concerns.

Eldridge Charles, 84, was born and raised in Cade, Louisiana, 190 miles east of New Orleans. He worried about a sister who managed a retirement/convalescent home for Holy Family sisters there. He wondered why he couldn't get through to her, even on a cell phone.

"The thing that goes through my mind when I see all that, I wonder how long those people are gonna be stuck in that kind of environment," he told The Tidings. "It just seems like somehow they could have speeded up things and done a better job. But I guess they did the best they could."

Still, he added that local and federal government officials knew the levees were 99 years old and how the mayor of New Orleans made a report to them that the levees needed to be reinforced or reconstructed.

He said, "The federal government cut them down," pursing his lips. "It's no problem with America coming into a foreign country when something happens. But we're not taking care of home, first."

James Healey, 46, has lived in Watts all his life and works at St. Lawrence of Brindisi's food pantry. He has two brothers who live in New Orleans. Both evacuated to safety, but their homes were gone.

"It's sad, it's depressing," he said. "But as long as my relatives are alive, that's the main thing. But a lot of people were too poor; they couldn't go nowhere. That's why a lot of them were trapped."

About recovery, Healey believed donations of money should go to the people, not bureaucracies. A member of the Knights of Peter Claver, which has its headquarters in New Orleans, he plans to donate directly to the African American fraternal organization. "We'll make sure it gets there," he said.

Rose Zenon lives in Alhambra but drives to St. Lawrence of Brindisi for mass and senior citizen activities. Originally from Lafayette, La., she also lived in New Orleans. She has a niece who lives in the city, but was caring for a sister in Lafayette when Hurricane Katrina hit.

"It's really terrible that such a catastrophic thing had to happen to a place that's so crowded with people," she said. "It breaks my heart to read or hear about it."

She had seen images of neighborhoods she knew as a girl that were completely flattened. When she was living in New Orleans, from the age of 19 to 22, she liked the city except for the "humid, humid" weather.

Nobody ever talked about it being below sea level and how dangerous that was, according to Zenon. "We didn't think about it," she said.

"It's almost unbelievable that something like that could happen. It's gonna take at least a year to start to recover. There's a lot of devastation out there.

"But it's God's will," she added. "My son and I were talking, and he said, 'Mom, it's God's will and there's nothing we can do about it."