2007 Program
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obono-cotd9w-readersguide.pdf
One Book, One New Orleans proudly presented Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, by Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club, as its 2007 community reading selection. Coming Out the Door is the first book written by a social and pleasure club about the second line community. Although images of second line parades are often used to represent New Orleans, the voices of people who produce and participate in this tradition have not been given as many opportunities to be heard outside of their communities. In their book, Nine Times members Raphael Anthony Peter Parker, Jr., Troy Materre, Gerald Platenburg, Corey Woods, Michael Simmons, Jean Nelson, and Charlena Matthews chronicle their lives growing up in the Desire Public Housing Development and the creation of one of the first parading organizations in the Upper Ninth Ward.Through stories and interviews, as well as photographs by Jules Cahn, Harold Baquet, Andy Levin, Ernie Green, and family photographs from Nine Times members, the rich tapestries of the Ninth Ward and second line communities come to life.
About the Book (from the Neighborhood Story Project)
Beginning with their own childhoods in the Desire Housing Project, Nine Times take the reader on a journey through their world: Motown Sound at Carver games, DJ’s in the courts, and sandlot football. It continues as the Housing Authority of New Orleans begins to demolish the Desire, and Nine Times begins to parade in the Ninth Ward. Written by the members during the year after Katrina, Nine Times writes about their lives, their parades, the storm and the rebuilding process. In Coming Out the Door, Nine Times brings readers into their world of second lines, brass bands, Magee’s Lounge, and the ties that bind.
About the Neighborhood Story Project
Coming Out the Door is a product of the Neighborhood Story Project, a documentary book-making project in New Orleans that was founded in 2004 by Rachel Breunlin and Abram Himelstein. Following its mission, “our stories told by us,” the NSP works with writers in neighborhoods around New Orleans to create books about their communities. The NSP is a collaborative partnership between the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans, the University of New Orleans, the Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy, and Loyola University.
Special Thanks
The 2007 project was made possible by Shell Exploration & Production Company, the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, New Orleans Public Libraries, and Dillard University. One Book, One New Orleans would also like to thank all the participants in our events, the Neighborhood Story Project, Hot Iron Press, Baty Landis and the Sound Café, Matt Sakakeeny, Helen Regis, the New Orleans Social Aid & Pleasure Club Task Force, Ray Johnson, and the John McDonogh Senior High Marching Band for their behind the scenes help.
Excerpt from the Preface of Coming Out the Door:
To be thankful for your blessing you have to speak what it is. We thank God for raising us in the Ninth Ward’s Desire Housing Project. We couldn’t ask for anything different. Many places don’t get a chance to be mentioned, so when the opportunity came for us to write about the village, we took it to let the world know the blessing that came from Desire, the third biggest housing project in the United States.
Images of drug dealers and violence are regularly put on projects all over the world. Until you actually go there and see, you will never know the love, the family, and the potential that exists in there not only in sports, but educationally and culturally as well. We have a chance to say some things about the ones who otherwise may never have been recognized the old timers that paved the way without knowing it.
Bringing some pride back to the community is a job for someone, and you never know who it is or what it is. It doesn’t have to be a super speaker on black history all the time. We established Nine Time Social and Pleasure Club in 1998 as a second line club with togetherness, familyhood, and fun. One thing about the tradition is, everyone wants to parade where God raised them up whether it’s uptown, downtown, Carrollton, Algiers, or New Orleans East. The Ninth Ward is where we’re from and that’s where our smoke is coming from.
The first year we paraded, spirits awoke and we had some fun in that mighty Desire. You can imagine how much it hurt us as former tenants, and now club members of Nine Times, when the project was torn down with no future plans on what would be done with the village.
After Katrina, Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club members were displaced everywhere. Like so many others, we were doing the best to communicate. Once the majority of our members were back in town, we began to rebuild our club and plan for another parade. We also came together to write this book. While we’ve planned and participated in a lot of events together, we’d never done anything like this before. It wasn’t always easy sometimes it seemed like it would never end but the process strengthened us to share some of our most important memories. We wrote about how we made it through our childhood in Desire and grew up to be independent. We looked back at our early experiences with second lining and traced the different paths that led us to join together as Nine Times.
To widen our perspective on the Ninth Ward and the second line culture of New Orleans, we talked to family members, friends, and people who helped us get established. We also asked club members who are still out of town, or just recently joined the club, to contribute some stories. Everything you read is true, and comes from the heart. We’ve come a long way, but the struggle isn’t over. We have our sights set on November 19, 2006, when Nine Times will come out again on the 3400 block of Louisa Street. From there we’ll go up Louisa Street through Press Park, over that bridge to visit our people on the other side, to Franklin Avenue on our way back home to Desire Street, down Desire to that Florida Project back over the tracks and get ready it’s time to go through that mighty Desire once more. Keep this in your prayers and it will happen.
