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K-Doe Lives
Antoinette K-Doe
The first episode of the five-part Right to Return: Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward introduced us to Antoinette K-Doe, the widow of R&B legend Ernie K-Doe, and a hurricane Katrina survivor. Holed up in the top floors of her Mother-in-Law Lounge, a bar and museum devoted to her late husband, K-Doe weathered the storm and its aftermath, firing her shotgun over the heads of would-be looters, and protecting the hand-carved effigy of her husband in a garbage bag until she was airlifted out a week later.
K-Doe returned to the city soon after the waters receded, parked her Cadillac hearse outside the museum, and began to rebuild. Back in her ruined home, which would not have electricity for months, she cleaned the flood-stained walls of the lounge by herself, and a year later the place was more or less back to normal.
Eccentric, nattily dressed, and completely committed to preserving the memory of her husband, Antoinette K-Doe represents a triumph over one of the most dire threats of Katrina: The loss of history. With the destruction of so many historic places, and the displacement of countless longtime residents, surely the cultural history of New Orleans is forever damaged. It is only through the irrepressible passion of people like K-Doe that places like the Mother-in-Law Lounge survive, and the spirit of the city lives on.