On a recent Wednesday night, three fans were raging in the industrial smoke piles at Norco Shell, so you can see a few miles from the interstate of the hat Carré Pillway. They are my guide to the woodland plantation in Los Angeles Square, Louisiana, whose new owner is commemorating the scene of the largest enslaved uprising in American history.
Woodland was recently purchased by Twin Sisters Joy and Jo Banner, who founded the Offspring Project to document the ancestral lineage of enslaved people and promote the well-being of black people along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. They are working to preserve the history of the plantation and believe that investment in the region’s cultural resources can provide an alternative to extractive industries that pollute the region and warm the climate.
A struggle for freedom
On a cold and rainy January evening in 1811, the plantation supervisor Charles Deslondes and a small group of rebels surrounded the woodland, then called the Andry Plantation, equipped with rifles, sabers and wild tools. They crossed the house, killed Andri's adult son, then marched downstream to New Orleans, and added recruits from adjacent plantations. It is believed that up to 500 insurgents have raised their weapons and marched with the Deslondes to establish a free black republic.
Two centuries later, about 45 spectators overflowed a narrow living room of plantation houses to learn about this one-many rebellion, which was severely suppressed and largely omitted by history books. The rebels never entered New Orleans. As many as 100 of them died, both in battle and through execution, quickly followed.
“They knew the chances of getting freedom were against them. But they did it anyway.”
More than 200 years later, this plantation extension country is known as the Cancer Alley for its dense fossil fuels and petrochemical plants. The Mississippi River between Louisiana and New Orleans is counting up to 378 industrial facilities along a 186-mile winding along a 186-mile winding along a 186-mile winding along a 170-mile winding along a 186-mile winding along a 17-mile winding along a 186-mile winding count. Many facilities ignore small minority communities, and in the 99th percentile, cancer risk is the risk of petrochemical pollution – in other words, high.
Artist Dread Scott organized a reenactment of the 1811 uprising five years ago. “It burned your throat,” he recalled. “It burned your eyes. It was horrible to see them at the playground across the street.”
Alternatives to pollution and poverty
According to Louisiana's budget program, Louisiana accounts for the poorest state in the country in terms of poverty, child poverty, income and income inequality over the years. From this favorable perspective, tens of thousands of dollars have poured into the state's industrial corridors since 2010 and have done nothing to improve the quality of life for Louisiana residents.
“Imagine if we were offering tax benefits to small businesses that actually live in the community and put their resources and products back into the community,” Joy Banner said.
Banners regularly host students and professors who record and preserve black history through oral history projects, archaeological excavations and other studies. Interests of museums, archaeologists and even tourists showcase alternatives to extract only models.
Stephanie Aubert, who was an oral history for future generations projects, was a former principal. She said she wished she knew the story of the place better in her life. “It's my history. I'm very proud,” she said. “I could have shared it all the time.”
According to researcher Ibrahima Seck, much of the history of the 1811 uprising is still being discovered. Seck suspects that some of these histories are actively overshadowed.
Artist Scott said such history has caused controversy among white people because they represent unjust challenges.
“If you can keep people ignorant, it’s actually much better for continuing to leverage their systems,” he said. “Although the oppressed sees people fighting back heroically, including ‘freedom or death, that’s a completely different mindset.”
A free town
In a short period of post-war reconstruction, the American Liberal Service distributed a small amount of land from plantation areas to freeing slaves and large families. In other cases, the package is purchased by a group of individuals who gather resources. In the 20th century, some complete plantations were sold to chemical plants, leaving the former “free town” on the fence of the factory.
Banners find their little Wallace community was founded by Nathaniel Wallace, a formerly enslaved black alliance soldier who successfully requested the government for a post office in 1886.
To preserve history, the Banner Sisters have been fighting a proposal from Greenfield LLC to build more than 50 grain silos along the Mississippi River. The island is almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and it will block the morning sunshine of Wallace, one of the few places in the river without heavy industry.
A-Historian, hired by Erin Edwards, who was hired by Greenfield, turned into a whistleblower, accusing the company of forcing her to withhold the results of the draft report that found that the proposed facility would damage cultural resources and potentially destroy the unmarked graves of enslaved people.
In the process of resisting the proposed silo, Joy Banner was kicked out of the Council meeting, filed ethical complaints and lawsuits against the Council, and conducted unsuccessful work for the parish council himself.
In August 2024, Greenfield announced that it would cancel the Wallace Valley Elevator. Two months later, the banner learned that the U.S. Department of the Interior designated 11 miles of river extensions, including the Greenfield site and Wallace as national heritage sites. The National Park Service regards it as a historic landmark until the Trump administration revoked its status in February 2025 at the request of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Greenfield still owns land, which means the threat of industrial development continues. But history here shows that even the darkest periods can trigger an uprising.
“When Trump was first elected, I was frightened.” “This time, I promised myself, 'You're in a free town.' It was built independent of the government.
Ned Randolph has a PhD degree from the University of California, San Diego. He lives in New Orleans and is a visiting scholar at Tulane University and consults and writes about environmental and social issues facing the South of the Bay.
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