Throughout south Louisiana, and certainly throughout the nation, folks honor their lifeless. At historic websites, battlefields, army cemeteries and different hallowed grounds, Individuals pay respects to those that sacrificed.
Enslaved folks helped construct this nation, and we owe them an identical reverence and our collective respect.
We’re lifelong residents of St. James Parish. Our households’ histories in Louisiana date again to earlier than the Civil Conflict. But, like so many others, our households’ tales have been misplaced, hidden, or swept apart.
One among Barbara’s ancestors, Harriet Jones, was born into slavery on this space. By 1874 – lower than a decade after the tip of the Civil Conflict – she had already bought 34 acres of land. That was actually particular for a lady who had been enslaved, and it has had an enduring affect on our household. In reality, that land has stayed in Barbara’s household, and a few descendants nonetheless stay there at this time.
Marie Richards, Gail’s great-great-grandmother, moved to the Monroe Plantation from a close-by reservation, her heritage being a mixture of African, European, and Native American. She raised Gail’s grandmother, mom, and uncles on the plantation till it was decimated by the flood of 1912. The household then moved to Convent, the place Gail’s great-great-grandmother labored as a midwife, offering pressing care and delivering infants of all races and backgrounds.
One among Barbara’s great-grandfathers, whose identify has been misplaced to time, helped to discovered a Freetown on this space. At a time when Black Individuals didn’t have the rights or safety of full citizenship, this settlement was a house totally free Blacks to lift households and construct wealth. Even at this time, we nonetheless don’t know the place this great-grandfather, who did a lot for our group, was buried or laid to relaxation.
Again and again, we watch because the historical past of our folks fades, leaving the reminiscence of our ancestors forgotten in south Louisiana. The lifeless are left unmarked, their resting locations misplaced to time.
However it’s one thing else completely when our ancestors’ graves are intentionally destroyed, become websites for poisonous oil, fuel and chemical crops. These services wipe away our previous and endanger our future generations, by poisoning the air and land, harming the residing in methods that may’t be undone.
As a rural space, St. James Parish by no means had a lot in the way in which of planning. In reality, the parish council didn’t undertake a unified land use plan till 11 years in the past. At the moment, in 2014, two districts, Districts 4 and 5, have been put aside for heavy business. As even probably the most informal observer of American historical past may guess, a majority of the parish’s Black residents stay within the two districts affected by the brand new designations. So, for many years — even earlier than it turned official coverage — parish leaders steered heavy business to those two areas.
In our neighborhoods, we face an inordinate and unforgivable focus of poisonous air pollution. Caught between a metal plant, fertilizer services, and pipelines, we confront polluted air, tainted water, and spoiled land day by day. We’ve got bronchial asthma and different respiratory sicknesses, burning eyes, and pores and skin circumstances. Worst of all, we’ve astronomical charges of most cancers: breast, mind, liver, pancreatic, and extra. The charges are so excessive, our parish and the others up and down the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans have earned the macabre moniker of “Most cancers Alley.”
However the illness shouldn’t be evenly unfold throughout the area. Inside Most cancers Alley, wealth and land belong to at least one group of individuals, whereas the carcinogens for which we’ve change into notorious are compelled on one other.
On this land the place heavy business is encroaching on Black neighborhoods and poisoning Black our bodies, plantations as soon as stood, up and down the river. And on these plantations, Black folks have been compelled to toil with out dignity or compensation, their our bodies disposed of unceremoniously in unmarked graves.
One such graveyard is situated in St. James Parish, on what was as soon as the location of the Buena Vista Plantation, inside a area that has since been bought by Formosa Plastics. There, enslaved folks have been interred within the least productive scrap of land to reduce bills for the household that exploited them as property.
Due to in depth genealogical analysis, the names of 5 of those persons are, in the end, identified.
Simon got here to Winchester Plantation on the tender age of 10. Born into slavery, he was compelled into a lifetime of labor as a baby, toiling in inhumane circumstances. Not solely did his work create wealth for his enslaver, however so too did his life itself. You see, he was used as collateral in a single mortgage mortgage after one other – like a automobile, a ship, or a chunk of actual property – from the age of 11 to the time of his loss of life at 25.
Betsy was solely six when her enslavement started on the Buena Vista Plantation. She was additionally put to work for the Winchester household, and her physique was used as collateral for loans beginning at age 10. Regardless that she died when she was 18, her physique continued for use to accumulate loans to maintain the plantation afloat after her loss of life.
As a four-year-old, Rachel was bought to the identical plantation. She — alongside along with her mom, Eve, then solely 20 years previous, her two-year-old brother James, and her one-year-old brother Manuel — have been trafficked 1,000 miles from their first dwelling in Virginia to this web site.
In her quick life, Rachel was mortgaged not less than thrice to assist the plantation that held her household in bondage. Then, after she died on the age of 9, her lifeless physique was used as collateral two extra instances.
One other baby, Harry, was enslaved and mortgaged for the plantation, dying younger like so many others on the age of 18.
A younger man named Stanley was purchased across the age of 26, dying simply six years later in his prime at 32. He too was buried on this web site. Even after his physique was within the floor, it nonetheless seems on monetary information as collateral for financial institution loans to the Buena Vista Plantation.
To today, nothing marks the graves through which their stays have been interred. There aren’t any crosses, no headstones, no cemetery gates. Solely previous maps and the surveys of native archeologists acknowledge this sacred place.
As an alternative of remembering our historical past and honoring our lifeless, we’ve been compelled to overlook, due to industrial destruction.
Ever since oil was discovered right here within the early Nineteen Fifties, refineries and petrochemical crops have paved over the plantations that after dotted this panorama, and with them, the stays of our ancestors.
It’s time we stopped this injustice. Our houses usually are not dumping websites for poisonous waste. And the graves of our ancestors usually are not building websites for polluting industries.
We’re not asking for a lot. We’re asking merely that we cease being poisoned and that the lives and recollections of our ancestors be honored. These are primary questions of human decency.
As for the ancestors buried on the former Buena Vista Plantation, our request is affordable. We wish what any household would need: to put headstones and acknowledge the location for what it actually is: a cemetery.
We pray that the present house owners of the location acknowledge what is correct and, in the end, enable us to honor the 5 named folks, and others unnamed, who lay at relaxation on these hallowed grounds.
Barbara Washington and Gail LeBoeuf are co-founders and co-directors of Inclusive Louisiana, a neighborhood group devoted to safeguarding the residents of St. James Parish and surrounding areas from the detrimental results of business air pollution.
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