By JACK BROOK
WALLACE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana landscape of centuries-old sugar cane plantations and enduring Afro-Creole culture along the Mississippi River had been eligible for receiving rare federal protection following a multi-year review by the National Park Service.
But this month, the agency withdrew the 11-mile stretch of land known as Great River Road from consideration for National Historic Landmark designation at the request of state officials, who celebrated the move as a win for economic development.
Community organizations bemoaned the decision as undermining efforts to preserve the rich yet endangered cultural legacies of free African American communities that grew out of slavery.
The region, in the heart of Louisiana’s heavily industrialized Chemical Corridor in St. John the Baptist Parish, has been at the center of conflicts between grassroots community groups challenging the expansion of polluting industrial facilities and officials and business leaders doubling down on their importance for sustaining local economies. The area is among the most threatened by climate injustice in the nation, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s climate vulnerability index.
Ashley Rogers, executive director of the nearby Whitney Plantation, said the decision to remove the Great River Road region from consideration for federally granted recognition was due to the “changing priorities” of the Trump administration, the latest blow to “a culture under attack.”
“It’s 100% because of the politics of the current administration, it’s not because we’ve suddenly decided that this place doesn’t matter,” Rogers said.
A multi-year National Park Service study on the area completed in October concluded that the “exceptional integrity” of the Great River Road landscape conveys “the feeling of living and working in the plantation system in the American South.”
Plantation buildings are so well-preserved that director Quentin Tarantino used them while filming “Django Unchained,” to capture the antebellum era. But there’s also a rich and overlooked history of the enslaved people who worked the plantations, their burial sites likely hidden in the surrounding cane fields and many of their descendants still living in tight-knit communities nearby.
The study deemed the region eligible to gain the same federal recognition as around 2,600 of the nation’s most important historical sites, including Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate and Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s residence.
However, the determination was “premature and untimely” given that a grain terminal that threatened to impact historic properties was no longer planned, said the National Park Service’s Joy Beasley, who oversees the designation of historic landmarks, in a Feb. 13 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Beasley’s letter stated the reversal was prompted by a request from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, which is tasked with regulating environmental protection and has made no secret of its support for industrial expansion.
The head of the department, Aurelia S. Giacometto, framed the decision as freeing the region from federal meddling and oversight and opening up pathways for development.
“I’m grateful that the Trump Administration understands that states and localities are better at determining their interests relating to clean air, water and developing industry than leaving crucial decisions like those to Washington,” Giacometto said in a statement.
Port of South Louisiana CEO Paul Matthew said in a press release that companies are clamoring to develop and expand along the Mississippi River, which would improve quality of life and spur economic growth without sacrificing cultural legacies.
“If you really want to lift people out of poverty, you get them work and increase job opportunity,” Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said.
Local historical and community organizations believe the region can instead improve its economy by focusing on preserving and promoting its history.
Ramshackled homes and shuttered buildings in the area are endemic of longstanding underinvestment in these communities, but it’s not too late to reverse this trend through means besides industrialization, said Joy Banner, co-founder of the local nonprofit The Descendants Project, which is restoring historical properties in Great River Road.
Banner helped lead efforts to successfully halt the construction of a towering $600 million industrial grain terminal that would have been built in her hometown, the predominantly Black community of Wallace — spurring the National Park Service’s study. A spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers said any future industrial development in the Great River Road would still need to consider the potential impacts on historical and cultural heritage.
In the region’s Willow Grove neighborhood, 76-year-old Isabella Poche still trims the grass and repaints the tombs at the cemetery where her mother, sisters and other relatives were buried with help from the Black community’s generations-old mutual aid society she now leads. Beyond the furrows of the sugar cane fields where her family once worked, a large plantation home stands in the distance by the river’s bank. It’s a peaceful place she hopes to see protected.
“I don’t want to move anywhere else,” Poche said. “I’ve been here all my life.”
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.
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