For Katrina Evacuees, A Chance to Be Heard

"I remember when James Brown made that song 'I'm Black and I'm Proud,' " Anderson said. "I remember seeing young black men and boys stick out their chest -- proud -- saying, 'Somebody acknowledged me.' With Obama, it's like that again."

Across town, Al Johnson, 68, who gained fame for singing the classic Mardi Gras tune "Carnival Time," lives in the Big Bass Resort, a retirement center in the suburb of Jacinto City. For four decades he lived in a home on Tennessee Street in New Orleans, traveled the country and performed. At Big Bass, he spends most of his time in his government-subsidized one-bedroom apartment because Houston so overwhelms him. His kitchen is cluttered with cardboard boxes of muddy albums and CDs salvaged from his destroyed home. A donated keyboard sits covered in a corner because the other people here don't want to hear him play what he calls the Lower Ninth Ward Blues.

"Everywhere I go, I get lost," Johnson said. "I just can't absorb Houston. I can't do nothing with it."

But he still snaps his fingers when he sings his newest song: "Hillary Clinton, need to be our president," he crooned. "When she gets into the White House, y'all, she's going to be the president of all."

He wrote the song because he admires Clinton and her husband, Bill -- and because he hoped Clinton's campaign would use it and pay him royalties. A couple of calls he made to a campaign office, playing the tune for an answering service, went unreturned.

"She need it in a sense," Johnson said. "Barack is giving her such a hard time." But the song is about all Johnson can offer -- he is still registered to vote in New Orleans.

When Martin Jones and his wife, Lenda, who is also an evangelical pastor, arrived in Houston they were brought on staff and given a small stipend at a sister church in the Assembly of God fellowship. Lenda Jones's employer, Shell Oil, transferred her from the New Orleans office to one in Houston, put her family up in an apartment and gave her a bonus. And a local car dealer knocked several thousand dollars off the price of a used car because he wanted to help.

"We've been blessed with everything we need, day by day," Lenda Jones said.

Nonetheless, the couple longs for New Orleans, where they want to restart the growing inner-city ministry they led. But the stale air, rodents and slow recovery have made it impossible for them to go back.

Martin Jones had a kidney transplant more than a decade ago, and when he and his wife returned to New Orleans to salvage what they could from their church and home, he contracted a bacterial infection that put him in the hospital for the better part of 18 months. "He nearly died," Lenda Jones said. "I love New Orleans, but I also have the common sense God gave me. We can't go back."

Gregory Sam doesn't think he can go back, either. He attended the University of New Orleans and graduated with a degree in art history. Two weeks before the hurricane, he graduated from the city's Delgado Community College with a degree in health information systems, prepared to search for a job managing data for a hospital or an insurance company. He knows such jobs do not exist now in New Orleans, where the medical system is still being rebuilt, but Sam's even had trouble finding a position in Houston, home of one of the largest medical centers in the country.

"Everybody is telling me I have to have a certain amount of experience under my belt," he said the other day, wiped out from working the night shift. "I'm like, 'Dang man, I've got a couple of degrees.' "

Despite his unhappiness, there have been moments of wonder during his time in Houston. Soon after arriving in the city, he applied for a house through a Habitat for Humanity program sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. In the application, he wrote about living in the Westchase Apartments, Unit No. 11, on the outskirts of New Orleans. There was a crack house a few doors down, Sam said. Police cruisers patrolled the complex, but it was home. Sam told Winfrey's committee he hoped that being a homeowner would bring some stability to his life and that of his 2-year-old son.

He was awarded one of the 65 houses, had a surprise meeting with Oprah and now lives on a tree-lined street called Angel Lane. The house came with furniture and a stocked pantry. Sam has an interest-free mortgage and pays $600 a month, but without a well-paying job he's still had to borrow money from family some months. His neighbor, also from New Orleans, could not find work in Houston and recently lost a house to foreclosure.

To Sam, Obama is fighting the same battle he is: The political pundits who say Obama does not have enough experience sound like all the people who won't give Sam a shot at a job.

"He meets all the requirements under the Constitution to be president. He is of age. He's a senator. He's a citizen, and he does have experience working in politics, working in inner cities, working with working-class people and poor people," Sam said.

He said Obama's past work as a community organizer in Chicago's Altgeld Gardens housing project convinced him that the senator understands where he's coming from and knows what it takes to rebuild New Orleans. "It takes a certain type of determination, especially from someone in politics, to want to go into an inner city and want to work, especially when you have a certain status," he said. "He just seems like a typical American that can relate.

"We're in an abyss right now," Sam said. "We cannot go no further down."