Hurricane Ian made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on the afternoon of Sept. 28 as a Category 4 Storm. With 150-mph winds and heavy rains, Ian was one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S.—it knocked out power for 2.6 million Floridians.
As the after-the-storm cleanup began, Florida’s Black communities were vocal in pointing out how they were being ignored by media and assistance organizations. The east Fort Myers neighborhood of Dunbar was among the hardest hit by Hurricane Ian, but initial media attention focused on the stories of white families who lost their homes on nearby island communities like Sanibel and Captiva.
Dunbar is a long-established traditionally Black neighborhood: it developed as Fort Myers became an important trading location in the 1880s. Members of the Civil War’sand formerly enslaved Blacks created the neighborhood and in the 20th century, it was a major stop on the famed Chitlin’ Circuit as well as a location where the first Black players to integrate Major League Baseball roomed when they were banned from rooming in Fort Myers’ white-owned hotels.
When Hurricane Ian hit, Dunbar and another Fort Myers neighborhood, Harlem Heights, saw their residents waiting to have their power restored and for food supplies to be delivered. “You know it happens with every disaster, every storm,” MacKenzie Marcelin, climate justice manager with the grassroots political power organization
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