Black Collective Memory as Economic Development Practice: Resistance and Renaissance in Louisiana’s River Parishes

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)?