Black Collective Memory as Economic Development Practice: Resistance and Renaissance in Louisiana’s River Parishes
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allen-tjallen-mcp-dusp-2024-thesis.pdf
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Thesis PDF
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14.26 MB
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Author(s)
Allen, Trace
Advisor(s)
Wendel, Delia Duong Ba
Date Issued
May 2024
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Incentivized by federal industrial policy, regional economies around the United States
are entertaining transitions to sustainable economies. This thesis investigates the role of
a Black collective memory in shaping the past, present, and future of these economies.
Utilizing case studies, this thesis profiles two visionary, trailblazing environmental justice
organizations, Rise St. James and The Descendants Projects. These organizations are
situated two rural, Black towns (St. James and Wallace respectively) in Louisiana’s
River Parishes, known infamously as Cancer Alley, due to the possessing the highest
density of petrochemical infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere, marking Black
residents as sacrificial for the sake of “economic development.” These current economic
development practices are descended from what Clyde Woods described as “plantation
epistemologies” rooted in “...monopoly of land, resources, and capital…and the
immobility of Black labor” (Woods, 2017, p. 215). An economic transition rooted in this
plantation logic may soon produce heirs promoting “false solutions” to the intertwined
environmental justice and climate crises.
Moving beyond standard deficit narratives, these cases assert the agency of
these Black descendant organizations (and their ancestors) in leveraging a Black
collective memory to both “stop the bad” and to “build the good”. This is denoted by the
Black collective memory of the nation’s largest slave rebellion occurring in the River
Parishes and in these organizations leading and embodying development rooted in
honoring these ancestors. As we embark on this seismic economic transition, what
lessons can be learned from these environmental justice leaders to embody Dr. David
Pellow’s claim, “these threatened bodies, populations, and spaces are indispensable to
building socially and environmentally just and resilient futures for us all” (Pellow, 2016,
p.227)?
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
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