Journalist Trymaine Lee reveals strength of Katrina survivors in hopeful documentary

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In 2005, Trymaine Lee was a young journalist working for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He was a police reporter in a beautiful, vibrant city, rich with Black community and culture. But on August 29, Hurricane Katrina came. In the days and weeks that followed, the storm virtually wiped generations of that away.

“There was so much loss and so much death and so much uncertainty,” Lee told the AmNews in an interview. “Until you experience an American city and it feels as if the bottom of society has dropped out, where the least and hungriest among us are even more so in desperation … I can’t forget the smell — the smell of death, the smell of despair. But then also, within that, moments where neighbors stood up for each other.”

Two decades since that time, Lee has gone on to win multiple accolades in his field, but his heart has always been in the Big Easy. He has returned to his reporting roots with his first foray into documentary work with “Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina,” focusing on the precariousness of Black life in a post-Katrina landscape.

A New Jersey native, Lee, 46, was hired as a reporter at the Times-Picayune in 2005, a few months before the storm hit. His coverage of the devastation Katrina wrought earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. The Times-Picayune team was also featured in Spike Lee’s pivotal documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” Lee went on to become a writer for the Huffington Post and the New York Times, an MSNBC contributor, author, entrepreneur, and host of the “Into America” podcast.

“I’ve been back to New Orleans many times since, over the last 20 years. I go back a few times every single year, for personal and professional reasons,” said Lee. “And I think in this context, so close to the anniversary, to walk in the footsteps that I walked 20 years ago, in the communities and neighborhoods that I walked 20 years ago, and remember and reflect on, you know what had been.”

From the frontlines to the new front porches, his documentary purposefully leans away from reciting the destruction of the hurricane. Instead, it is essentially a love letter to those in the community who were able to stay and rebuild over the last two decades. It shines a light on people working in areas like environmental activism, arts and music, Black maternal health, schools, education, technology, and agriculture and farming, within the New Orleans and Mississippi communities that are on the ground now.

“The hope in high water — even in the high water of being Black in America, there is always hope,” said Lee. “To be able to show how we are working to help and heal and save ourselves when everything else fails us — it’s a story that I’m privileged to tell, honestly, so I don’t take my role lightly.”

Lee serves as host and executive producer of “Hope in High Water,” while Emmy-nominated filmmaker Haimy Assefa directs. The film is a co-production between Lee’s I Am Somebody Media and Assefa’s Blue Black Studio.

The documentary is also supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, the WKKF responded with millions in grants and emergency funding to help struggling residents. The foundation now invests about $34 million annually in the New Orleans and Jackson region, said WKKF.

“It is important we honor the strength and leadership of communities who are reimagining and rebuilding — not just their homes and neighborhoods, but systems rooted in equity, culture, and care,” said La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the WKKF, in a statement. “As more communities across the country and world face climate threats and systemic disruption, we have much to learn from the Gulf South. We are proud to support ‘Hope in High Water’ and to uplift the stories of people leading the way toward a more just future for all children.”

The documentary features nonprofit WKKF grantees such as the Sankofa Community Development Corporation, Grow Dat Youth Farm, STEM NOLA, Saul’s Light, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA), and Boat People SOS.

Lee spoke about the younger generations that did not witness or experience the horrors of Hurricane Katrina firsthand and missed “the harsh reality of how America can turn on” people who are Black, vulnerable, elderly, impoverished, and — in many cases — disabled. He hopes that his work will show today’s youth the resiliency and community that people marshalled in a time of great need.

“Whether it’s the carceral system and police, or the violence of hunger, or the violence of segregation, children are bearing the weight of all that,” said Lee, “so I think there’s this wild juxtaposition in New Orleans because they love life. You know, they are such a giving, loving, fun-loving people, but children to adulthood are facing stark odds, and so to highlight folks who are working to mitigate some of that, it was beautiful to see.”

“Hope in High Water” is currently streaming on Peacock.