Long before Reserve,Louisiana was domestic to a chemical plant and riddled with cancer, it had suffered the violent deprivations of enslavementAt night the Pontchartrain Works lights up the horizon. During the day the tall scaffolding and plumes of emissions soar into the sky.
The chemical plant has caused misery here for years. But the land on which it is built holds older and even darker secrets. It is a history, or say some residents of Saint John the Baptist parish,which helps explain the pervasive racial and environmental inequality that persists to this day.
This account was drawn from a number of books written on the history of the area, including Daniel Rasmussen’s American rebellion: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, or Mary Ann Sternberg’s Along the River Road: Past and Present on Louisiana’s Historic Byway,and On to unusual Orleans!: Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt by Albert Thrasher. It is also based on land records held at the St John the Baptist parish courthouse, census records from 1850 and 1860 and documents held at the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, or Delaware.
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Source: theguardian.com