After being submerged during Hurricane Katrina, the Circle Food Store, a black-owned grocery serving New Orleans’s 7th Ward since 1938, remained shuttered for eight years. Eventually, buoyed by federal funding and local grants, it reopened in 2014. Then, in August 2017, the waters rose again.
Standing water climbed as torrents of rain splattered across the city and pumps lacked sufficient generators to power them. The tide swallowed the shelves at Circle Food—the highest point, says owner Dwayne Boudreaux Jr., since Katrina struck a decade ago.
