Erin Edwards was working as an architectural historian in 2021. She’d been assigned by her bosses at Gulf South Research Corporation to write a report with a co-worker on the land surrounding two historic plantations in the St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana. Edwards’ report could seriously impact the ability for Greenfield, an agricultural company that purchased the land for $40 million, to build a $400 million grain elevator. According to reporting by Seth Freed Wessler of ProPublica, the first draft of Edwards’ report was devastating to the builders—and that’s when things got hairy.
Edwards’ report outlined that the grain elevator would in fact disturb the 750–person community of Wallace, the area just outside of the Whitney Plantation Museum, as well as an all-Black cemetery—two sites that stand in tribute to those enslaved at the plantation and their descendants.
Greenfield was hoping to receive a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to build the 250-foot-tall grain elevator and its 54 grain silos. The report was required by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which gives the Corps the power to kill a project if it finds it to be destructive to historic sites.
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Edwards and her co-author found that the grain elevator would have “an adverse effect on historic properties,” ProPublica reports. But more damning was that the authors recommended that the site be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, because, as they determined, there was a distinct possibility that the land likely had a number of unmarked graves that had yet to be discovered.
“Thus far, no enslaved cemeteries have been found for either Whitney or Evergreen Plantations … despite hundreds of enslaved people being kept there for over 155 years,” the report read.
But just three months after Edwards handed over her report, she learned that the parts about the unmarked graves and “adverse effects” had been scrapped. Greenfield had been pressured by Gulf South to remove those key pieces of information from the report, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.
“It is unethical for a client to tell us what our findings are. … They came to us for our expertise, and they got a professional report that is factual,” Edwards told ProPublica in an email. “Our reputation will be that we can be bought.”
Mike Renacker, head of cultural resources at Gulf South, responded to Edwards’ email:
“I’m not suggesting, nor would I ever suggest that we do something unethical. I’m not questioning your methods or even the recommendation. What I am doing is laying out the problem we are having and asking for help to find a solution.”
Gulf South denied to ProPublica any wrongdoing, asserted that reports were often edited by clients, and attempted to shift blame to the historian herself by adding that they’d asked for more information from Edwards but she “was unable to provide data needed to meet the referenced listing criteria.”
The mostly Black community of Wallace are descendants of those who were enslaved at the Whitney Plantation and freed slaves who purchased land after Emancipation. Several people interviewed by ProPublica confirmed that their relatives were buried in the nearby Willow Grove Cemetery. Ryan Gray, who works for a private cultural resource management firm in the state, told ProPublica that the cemetery likely extends into land outside of where the marked graves sit, writing that the land around the cemetery is “almost positively the location” of “unmarked enslaved or nineteenth-century post-Emancipation burials.”
Joy and Jo Banner are twin sisters who live in Wallace and are co-founders of the Descendants Project, a nonprofit committed to the preservation and healing of the descendant community in Louisiana’s river parishes. Joy Banner is also the communications director at the Whitney Plantation, which draws 100,000 visitors a year and is the only plantation in Louisiana that focuses its history on those who were enslaved there.
“If they build this, this community will not survive,” Joy Banner told ProPublica.
In May 2021, builders began driving dozens of metal beams into the ground near the Whitney. The Banner sisters jumped into action and asked the Center for Constitutional Rights, the attorneys who represent the Descendants Project, to send a letter to the Louisiana attorney general and the Louisiana Division of Archaeology to demand the building stop, citing the presence of unmarked burial sites.
The attorney general’s office brushed off the letter, saying unless there were actual bones dug up, the state refused to intervene in the building. So in November, the Descendants Project sued St. John the Baptist Parish, ProPublica reports, and in April the judge ruled that the suit could move forward.
“These are Black spaces. … The trauma of not being able to talk freely about our own history is hurting our communities,” Joy Banner told ProPublica. “We have this district, we have an area that is really not found anywhere in the country. Communities like ours have been surviving all this time, since slavery and after slavery, so we’re fighting to protect this place.”
The nail in the coffin for the Gulf South project (at least for now) was a letter Edwards, who had resigned from Greenfield after seven years, wrote to the director of the state Division of Historic Preservation, Nicole Hobson-Morris, warning that her report had been edited. Hobson-Morris sent the letter up the chain to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, telling them of her “concerns” about the project and that she’d be relaying the information to the Army Corps of Engineers in her review.
In mid-April, the Corps told ProPublica that it disagreed with Gulf South’s edited report and named the Descendants Project a consulting party in the permitting process for the project.
“We at the Corps are seeing adverse impacts,” Ricky Boyett, chief of public affairs for the New Orleans District, told ProPublica. “There’s discussion of cemeteries in the area. … We need to do a little more research on those as well.”
The permit for the grain elevator remains under review, Boyett told ProPublica.