BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Anger. Sorrow. Vengeful glee. Guilt. Terrence Carter has experienced it all during Baton Rouge’s summer of pain. And on Thursday, as he walked through the dirty water on the floor of his Baton Rouge home, Carter said he was experiencing, of all things, hope.
“A couple of weeks ago, it seems like everybody was pulling apart. Now it’s no black and white thing. Everybody’s just got to help everybody to come out of this,” Carter said.
Baton Rouge, the unassuming Louisiana capital city that is often overshadowed by jazz-loving, hard-partying New Orleans, has endured a string of tragedies this summer: the July 7 shooting death of a black man at the hands of two white police officers, the July 17 ambush killings of three officers by a black man, and now, the rains that have triggered catastrophic flooding.
And yet, amid this latest crisis, Carter and others have seen people pull together – white and black, officers and civilians – in ways that give them hope.
“We had so much division and hate in this city, but it’s kind of a cleansing and a washing and God letting us know that all the things that we are fighting over and that are dividing us, that he’s in control of everything,” Cleve Dunn Jr., a businessman and leader in the black community.