Mark R. Rank is a professor of social welfare at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (Oxford University Press, 2004). His focus is on poverty, social welfare and economic inequalities.

The Twenty-First Century Foundation (21CF), based in New York, works to support African-American philanthropy for groups involved with community organizing, advocacy and leadership development.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is an advocacy group of low- and moderate-income families, with national offices in Brooklyn, N.Y. Contact Charles Jackson, press coordinator.

Havidán Rodríguez is former director of the Disaster Research Center and professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware in Newark.

Beverly Wright is founder and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University in New Orleans. She is co-author of a report, sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation and released in May 2006, which concluded that minorities and low-income residents have recovered more slowly after Katrina, in part because they have less […]

Alan Steinweis is a professor of history and Holocaust studies at the University of Vermont. He directs the school’s Center for Holocaust Studies and is an expert on the history of Nazi Germany.

Read the U.S. Census Bureau’s state facts, including age and race, and compare them to national averages.

The Economic Research Service offers state profiles that include income and poverty rates for rural and urban dwellers.

Read a report called “Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences,” posted on the website of the Social Science Research Council. It examines issues of race and racism revealed by Katrina, and contains the links to writings on the hurricane by more than 35 academics.