When the levees broke, submerging much of New Orleans under seven feet of brackish floodwater in the summer of 2005, Darresha George was seven months pregnant. She sought refuge on a narrow bridge overlooking the city, where she remained, without food or water, for two days until she was rescued by a military helicopter. Buses would shuttle her and thousands of other New Orleanians to Texas, where she has lived ever since, eventually settling in the town of Mont Belvieu, about thirty miles east of Houston.The baby she was carrying when she evacuated is now eighteen years old and at the center of a controversy that has garnered national attention after officials at Barbers Hill High School suspended the teenager for violating the district’s strict…
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