Le Ella Lee

Abstract

Born the second of three children in 1987, Le Ella Lee, or Brandy, as she prefers to be called, was raised by her mother, Velbert Stampley, who found expression through her cooking in a catering business she ran before a car accident lef t her in constant pain. Lee’s maternal grandfather was an active participant in the freedom struggle in Natchez, Mississippi, for which he was imprisoned and tortured for six days in Parchman Prison.¹ Before he was taken away, he told his wife, Annie Stampley, he would gladly go to prison if it would lead to a better life for his children. He died shortly after he returned home. In the fall of 2005, Le Ella began her senior year of high school in Metairie, a predominantly white, middle-class suburb of New Orleans, and graduated in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, after a short stay in Cullman, Alabama, where Le Ella and many distant relatives ended up after the storm.

On December 15, 2005. Brandy came to the Birmingham Urban League with her mother and baby brother after school on an outing that had Wal-Mart as the final destination.² She was still dressed in school clothes with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. The interview was conducted in the Urban League’s conference room with a buffet of food along one wall. Temporarily hanging on the inner wall of the room was a map of New Orleans, which drew tears when it was spotted. When it was Le Ella’s turn to talk, Velbert and her brother Mikey left the room. Immediately, Brandy was transformed from a withdrawn listener into a self-confident performer.

Le Ella’s trauma was primarily a product of her abrupt separation from her friends in her senior year. Several of her closest friends were never heard from again. On a trip back home to see what belongings could be salvaged, Le Ella discovered the body of an older neighbor from a neighboring apartment to whom she had been close. However, by December 2005, Brandy had begun to imagine an even brighter future than she had thought possible in New Orleans.