The names of the dead were lost beneath a sugarcane field in St. James Parish. For decades, families whispered that their ancestors were buried there. This includes enslaved men, women, and children whose remains lay unmarked because white landowners denied them proper burial. When heavy machinery arrived, those whispers turned into a crisis. The land, bought by Formosa Plastics Group in 2017, was slated for excavation as part of a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex. The project threatened to disturb at least one known cemetery.
Currently, the Buena Vista Plantation Cemetery has been identified, with genealogists confirming five enslaved individuals buried there. Formosa has acknowledged the find but continues to fence off the site. Authorities have denied descendants access and threatened them with arrest under pipeline trespass laws, even though the descendants hold valid legal claims to visitation.
In July 2025, Inclusive Louisiana and The Descendants Project filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Louisiana. They argue Louisiana officials violated the 13th Amendment by treating the graves as property and restricting descendant access. The argument was grounded in the amendment’s prohibition against ownership of another “even if that person is deceased.”
This environmental dispute is also a fight over memory, humanity, and legal dignity. When descendants came to pray, clutching rosaries or photographs, they were met with security guards and “No Trespassing” signs. This moment starkly revealed Louisiana’s priorities, which encompass legislative halls to permitting desks. The state placed corporate ambition above ancestral sanctity.
A Legacy of Exploitation: From Sugar to Petrochemicals
The soil along the Mississippi River has always generated wealth, but not for the people who worked it. In the 18th and 19th centuries, St. James Parish enslaved more than 4,000 people according to the 1860 U.S. Census, making up nearly half the local population. The parish became one of the most heavily enslaved areas in Louisiana’s sugarcane-producing region, where the labor was grueling and the profits flowed upward. Sugarcane grew easily in that soil, but the system relied entirely on Black people treated as capital, bought and sold into a life of violence with no rights and no freedom.
Today, the same riverbanks are dominated not by sugar mills, but by petrochemical facilities. The land that once extracted labor now extracts health. Formosa’s “Sunshine Project,” a $9.4 billion plastics plant planned since 2018, stands on ground once part of Buena Vista and Acadia plantations—sites where enslaved people toiled and died. The project has faced sustained resistance from local organizers, including Rise St. James, a Black-led grassroots group founded by Sharon Lavigne, along with allies from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Healthy Gulf, who have exposed the project’s environmental, historical, and racial justice consequences.
When Formosa first applied in 2018, the company did not disclose the burial grounds. By the time a 2020 archeological survey flagged these graves, Louisiana had already greenlit construction permits, including one from the U.S. Army Corps that initially fast-tracked the site before briefly pausing amid public outcry.
This is exploitation entrenched. Slaveholders once profited from forced labor; today, corporations profit from petrochemicals, with costs borne disproportionately by Black communities. These communities were often descendants of the enslaved, and were not consulted. Instead, profit spoke louder than memory, and pollution became the new crop.
“Badges and Incidents of Slavery”: A Legal Battle for Dignity
Black families in St. James Parish remembered their ancestors; and, moreover, they maintained the knowledge of where they were buried. Those burial sites, though unmarked, are sacred ground. But in July 2025, descendants and allied organizations took the state to federal court, arguing that the denial of their right to access these graves is a violation of the 13th Amendment’s broader promise. The promise was supposed to represent the end of slavery and the erasure of its lingering symbols.
The lawsuit, filed by Inclusive Louisiana and The Descendants Project against Formosa Plastics and state agencies in the Eastern District of Louisiana, hinges precisely on the idea that restricting access is a “badge or incident of slavery,” a phrase revived from Reconstruction-era jurisprudence. The complaint traces how slaveholders once owned both the people and their remains, and argues that that ownership continues when a corporation claims control over gravesites and denies descendants the ability to pray or place headstones.
Legal precedent affirms that the 13th Amendment’s Section 2 empowered Congress to abolish these lingering vestiges; and, through laws, Congress they have been able to dismantle both public and private racial subordination. Landmark rulings like Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer (1968) held that Congress can outlaw private acts of racial discrimination as “badges and incidents of slavery.” Courts have also applied the doctrine to peonage and exploitative labor practices.
In the Formosa case, descendants aren’t asking for monetary damages. They want recognition, access, and dignity, and they want the state to admit that controlling their ancestors’ gravesites is not property law, but rather a violation of human rights sustained by the afterlife of slavery.
One striking example involves a 2020 court order that required Formosa to grant descendants access, but the company responded with draconian conditions. They routed visitors through muddy miles of unpaved roads, changed schedules at will, monitored prayer gatherings, and forbade laying headstones.
As Loyola law professor Andrea Armstrong notes, while such Thirteenth Amendment-based cemetery claims are rare, they are rooted in sound legal theory, and also deeply needed in places like Louisiana, where history’s shadows are buried under profit .
If the courts accept this claim, they’ll affirm that the 13th Amendment protects living descendants’ rights to memorialize the dead, and not just their freedom in life. However if they dismiss it, they’ll affirm that state-backed corporate power can deny not just the living, but the dead, their dignity.
The Broader Pattern: Louisiana’s War on Black Burial Grounds
Formosa’s encroachment on slave cemeteries is part of a statewide pattern. Whether it’s highway projects in Shreveport or redevelopment schemes in New Orleans, Black burial sites have been treated as optional collateral damage.
In Shreveport’s Allendale neighborhood, the long-delayed I‑49 Inner‑City Connector threatened to demolish historic African-American graves and community landmarks. Despite residents’ protests, construction advanced without comprehensive archaeological protection.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, expansion of University Medical Center over the former Charity Hospital Cemetery, a mass grave site for enslaved, indigent, and yellow fever victims, took place with minimal consultation, no formal acknowledgement, and scant archaeological oversight?
Even outside major cities, the struggle continues. In Plaquemine, the Revilletown Cemetery, founded by formerly enslaved families in 1881, has been fenced off and visited only through legal fights against neighboring industry. This is a visible and unyielding reminder that descendants must petition for permission to visit gravesites.
Louisiana does have laws, like the Unmarked Human Burial Sites Preservation Act (1992), intended to protect unmarked graves that even protect those without formal cemetery registration. However, enforcement is lax, permits are routinely granted before proper surveys, and state agencies rarely prioritize descendant access. Developers and DOT officials often treat cemeteries, especially those associated with Black and Indigenous peoples, expendable.
This systemic recklessness echoes the centuries-old practice of burying enslaved people in unmarked, forgotten plots. It’s no coincidence that these graves remain hidden and easily disrupted when descendants can’t legally defend them. That erasure is a choice and a pattern reflecting a state that historically safeguards Confederate memorials while disregarding ancestral Black spaces.
Louisiana may celebrate its tourist circuit of grand plantations and antebellum heritage, but beneath the gloss lies a refusal to honor the dead as fully human. In St. James, New Orleans, and beyond, that refusal is nothing less than a legislative, regulatory, and emotional abandonment.
Who Benefits from Erasure?
Erasure in Louisiana is clearly engineered to benefit particular interests. Formosa’s massive petrochemical complex in St. James Parish promises hundreds of jobs and substantial tax breaks for local governments. Louisiana Economic Development and the St. James Parish Council champion the project for its “economic boon.” The reality, however, is that billions flow to shareholders and executives, while the local Black community bears the environmental and existential costs, which include polluted air, contaminated water, and historical erasure.
This is starkly evident in Cancer Alley, where over 150 petrochemical plants line the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. According to the EPA’s EJScreen, cancer mortality rates in parts of St. James (e.g., Reserve and St. Gabriel) are significantly higher than national averages. In Reserve’s case, nearly 50 times greater than the national average for some pollutants, and many residents succumb to cancer annually.
Permits continue to be issued despite this human toll. Formosa’s site, a known slave cemetery, demonstrates how health disparities and historical disrespect are sidelined in pursuit of profit. Corporate investment is prioritized while descendants, their ancestors, and community health are expendable.
It’s a system where the burdens fall on Black Louisiana while the visions of prosperity remain abstract. Polluted air, bulldozed graves, and withheld access replace promised dividends. Dismissing this injustice as mere negligence does a disservice for those whose rights have been undermined over the years. The public didn’t learn about the site’s burial grounds, environmental risks, or corporate protections from the state. That knowledge came from local organizers. Rise St. James, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Healthy Gulf exposed the true cost of this project and kept pressure on when state agencies stayed silent.
Ultimately, Formosa’s gains prove that erasure, including of Black history, is a commodity. Memory has a price; and, in present-day Louisiana, it is still negotiated at market value.
A Right to Remember: What Must Change
The right to remember shouldn’t have to be defended in court, not should it require descendants to dig through archives, hire lawyers, or risk arrest just to stand over the bones of their ancestors. Yet, in Louisiana, this is exactly what it takes. The refusal to protect Black burial grounds is a policy choice, not a bureaucratic oversight. It is what happens when a state decides that corporate expansion matters more than ancestral dignity.
To break that cycle, Louisiana must finally act like a place that values not only the lives, but also the afterlives of Black people. That begins with comprehensive legislation to identify and protect slave cemeteries across the state. For decades, developers have built over these sites without consequence because the law did not require them to look. When Formosa acquired the Buena Vista plantation property, there was no mandate to conduct a thorough cultural survey. The state approved permits long before acknowledging what the community already knew. The land wasn’t empty. It was full of memory.
Other states, including North Carolina and Alabama, require cultural and archaeological assessments before approving major developments. Louisiana should do the same. Because this is a region built on slavery, protecting these sites is the least the state can do. A statewide registry of unmarked Black cemeteries, built in collaboration with descendants, historians, and archaeologists, would be a small but vital step toward preservation. The state should also guarantee legal access to burial grounds, no matter who owns the land above them.
Any true reform must also address complicity. Through the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, Louisiana routinely rewards corporations with massive tax breaks for developments that desecrate land and displace communities. In recent years, that program has cost local governments more than $1.8 billion annually. This is money that could be used for schools, health clinics, or historical preservation; but instead, it props up industries that bulldoze the past and pollute the present. No project that sits atop a cemetery, confirmed or suspected, should be eligible for state tax subsidies because there is nothing honorable about incentivizing erasure.
Ultimately, the courts must recognize that this is not just about land use or permitting. It is about the Constitution. The 13th Amendment was not only written to abolish slavery, but to destroy its lingering shadows, which includes the “badges and incidents” that still mark American life. Denying Black families the right to access and honor their ancestors is one of those shadows. It is a continuation of a system that treated Black bodies as disposable in life and in death. The lawsuit brought by the Descendants Project and Inclusive Louisiana argues exactly that, and the courts should affirm it.
The ground beneath Formosa’s site holds more than potential profit. It holds bones. It holds names erased from ledgers and stories passed down in hushed voices. It holds evidence of a brutal past that this state has never fully reckoned with. Louisiana doesn’t need more task forces or heritage tourism slogans. It needs to protect what’s buried, and the people who still carry its memory.
A Prayer the State Won’t Let Them Say
Descendants of the enslaved came to the Buena Vista plantation site in St. James Parish to pray. They weren’t protesting or holding signs. They came quietly with flowers, family stories, and with the hope that they could stand where their ancestors were buried, speak their names aloud, and honor their memory. At least five graves have been confirmed at the site, and many more are believed to lie beneath the fields. When they arrived, however, they found the land fenced off. Surveillance cameras watched them, with “No Trespassing” signs lining the property, and armed guards standing between them and the graves.
These were not strangers to the land. Their families had lived and died there for generations. In the eyes of the state and the corporation that now owns the property, however, they were trespassers.
The land belongs to Formosa now. With that ownership came the power to deny even the most basic act of mourning. Despite a court order requiring Formosa to allow access, the company imposed strict conditions, which included long detours, limited time windows, surveillance, and bans on placing headstones. In Louisiana, even grief has to be negotiated.
What happened at Buena Vista isn’t unique though. It’s part of a larger pattern in which corporations receive state support to expand over sites that hold deep meaning for Black families; and this is true whether it’s a cemetery, a home, or a neighborhood. If the past gets in the way of the next petrochemical deal, it’s the past that gets paved over. And the people trying to preserve it are left locked out, written out, or pushed aside.
This is more than a land dispute. It’s about whether Black history in Louisiana is something the state will defend, or something it will let industry erase. And it’s about whether Black families have the right to remember those who were never meant to be remembered in the first place.
The 13th Amendment ended slavery, but it didn’t end the systems that silence Black voices or deny Black dignity, in life or in death. It didn’t stop the permit, nor did it stop the fences; and it certainly didn’t stop the silence.
So though the prayer remains unsaid, it’s not because the descendants forgot the words, but because the state made it a crime to speak them on the land where their ancestors are buried.
If Louisiana wants to honor its past, it must start by honoring those whose blood built this land. That means allowing their descendants to grieve so that they can remember and to stand at the graves they were never meant to forget.
Until then, the question of who is allowed to be mourned remains.
Ultimately, that answer says everything about who this state still believes matters.
