Legacies links for July 15, 2024: Plantations & Environmental Racism

As always, we invite you to share this post with students, colleagues, and anyone else who is interested in the legacies of slavery. A link here does not imply agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.

Two images: on left, a slightly run-down plantation house with two gables and a colonnade; on right, a parade of African Americans in period costume re-enacting the slave rebellion of 1811.
The Woodlawn Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, was the starting point for the largest rebellion of the enslaved in America, the German Coast Uprising of 1811. The plantation is now owned by a pair of Black activists, the Banner sisters. Above left, the plantation c. 2017; above right, a 2019 re-enactment of the rebellion organized by artist Dread Scott. Sources: Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans and Soul Brother/Dread Scott.
  • Debbie Elliott, “Louisiana plantation where historic slave revolt started now under Black ownership,” NPR (July 9, 2024): LINK. The Woodland Plantation House (LaPlace, LA) is now owned by two Black sisters, activists, and preservationists: Jo and Joy Banner, co-founders of the Descendants Project. Woodlawn was the starting point of the German Coast Uprising of 1811, the largest slave rebellion on American soil. (The Banners are also engaged in a fight to prevent a proposed grain terminal in Wallace, LA, which they say will harm the area’s Black heritage and the environment.)
  • Whitney Nell Stewart, “Why Descendants Are Returning to the Plantations Where Their Ancestors Were Enslaved,” Smithsonian Magazine (July 11, 2024): LINK. Even more examples of “Black Americans … reclaiming antebellum estates as part of their family legacy, reflecting the power and possibility of these historic sites.”
  • Sarah Cwiek, “Grant will help Michigan locate, research African American tourism history spots,” Michigan Public (July 11, 2024): LINK. A new grant from the National Park Service will help Michigan officials identify historic sites mentioned in the Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide for African American travelers in the 1930s-60s.
  • Jon Hale, “60 Years Later, Freedom Schools Are Still Radical — and Necessary,” Time (July 8, 2024): LINK. The author of The Freedom Schools (Columbia Univ. Press, 2016) reflects on the continuing legacy of “liberatory” education in the Civil Rights Era: “Today, the Freedom Schools continue to instill lessons of the past and for democracy. Freedom Schools will continue to assign books that center the experiences of children and families historically marginalized…. Much like 1964, students will march, canvas, and attempt to educate a nation.”
  • Kevin A. Young, “Black economic boycotts of the civil rights era still offer lessons on how to achieve a just society,” The Conversation (July 1, 2024): LINK. Historian argues that Black economic boycotts, not public opinion, is how African Americans secured civil rights in the 1960s: “By causing massive and sustained disruption to ruling-class interests, particularly businesses, Black organizers who were formally excluded from political power were able to force legal change.”
  • Shomial Ahmad, “Purple and Black: Three generations of TCU grads recount university’s complex history with race,” Fort Worth Report (July 9, 2024): LINK. Inspired by the institutional effort to reckon with the legacy of slavery at CIC member Texas Christian University, an African American family reflects on a multi-generation journey from from desegregation to present-day.
  • Adam Mahoney, “Crypto-Mining Creates New Environmental Injustices for Black Texans,” Capital B News (July 9, 2024): LINK. In response to a boom in data centers — thanks to crypto-currency mining and AI supercomputing — the Lone Star State decided to build new power plants that burn fossil fuels (even though wind and solar power are more reliable and cheaper to produce). Some of the new plants are pouring pollutants into Black communities.
  • Willy Blackmore, “Hurricane Beryl’s Path of Black Destruction,” Word in Black (July 8, 2024): LINK. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey showed that many Black neighborhoods in Houston are especially prone to flooding (and power loss). Last week, Black Houston was hit hard again by Hurricane Beryl, which already left a path of destruction across the Caribbean.
  • Allison Wiltz, “Black Communities Are Hotter. And That’s Because of Systemic Racism,” Medium (July 7, 2024): LINK (you may need a free account to access this). The author discusses how systemic racism has shaped the incidence of urban heat, with a disproportionate impact on historically Black neighborhoods: “America’s legacy of racial redlining, a policy that isolated the vast majority of Black people in neighborhoods systematically deprived of resources, is not a ghost but a living, breathing monster.”