Shelton Alexander

Shelton “Shakespear” Alexander, a poet and creative writing teacher, pressed record on his video camera as the winds started picking up hours before Katrina arrived. The footage begins at his home in Violet, Louisiana, in the St. Bernard Parish—the last Parish before the Gulf opens up. Shelton, ever the observer, narrates his experience over hours of footage from the Superdome. As experienced inside the Dome, Shelton showed how thousands of people attempted to get MRE’s, waited for rescue, and even had moments of lightheartedness, like when an impromptu second line formed in the dark recesses of the dome with people cheerily singing “This Little Light of Mine.”