I usually can't stand to watch Shays because of his track record, but watched a few minutes of the hearings on C-SPAN, which was all I could take. A middle-aged black woman with a cloth wrapped around her head was claiming to be an eyewitness to the supposed bombing of the levee. Shays tried to find out how close she was to the place where the levee broke at the time, and she kept giving him a run-around (useless information to anyone not a resident of her block).
Those who have never lived in a place like New Orleans are often incapable of understanding how folks like this function.She may not know how close she was to the levee break. Shays should have known what he was going to have to deal with ... and he should have armed himself with information about the area ... and, perhaps, even a map ... so that he could make sense of what this woman was trying to tell him.
The parameters of their lives are often circumscribed by a very small area ... physically, mentally and emotionally ... they often can not give you their address where they live ... but can "show [you] where they stay". Some have never before gotten very far out of their neighborhood.
Sadly, in an era when most of them have had ready access to public education, many of them have not even reached the bottom rung of the educational ladder.
That does not make their plight any less tragic ... but perhaps it will help you to become better able to understand it.
There are always jewels in this element of society who are able to see that education is the way out for those they love.
Never forget that the people who testified have been carefully chosen for a carefully orchestrated effect.