They’re fighting polluters destroying historically Black towns – starting with their own
When twin sisters Joy and Jo Banner founded their non-profit, the Descendants Project, in 2020, their goal was to protect the Black-founded “freetowns” in Louisiana’s river parishes. Like the Banners’ hometown of Wallace, many of the Black communities that abut the lower Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans were founded after emancipation by people who’d once been enslaved.
Today, decades of disinvestment have left freetowns vulnerable to predatory development, land theft and industrialization. The Banners hoped to reverse those trends. Yet within weeks of creating their organization, their purpose shifted dramatically. Instead of supporting other Black communities, the twins found themselves fighting for their own hometown’s survival. Wallace, population 1,240, was facing an existential threat in the form of the proposed construction of a gargantuan grain-export terminal, the latest in an onslaught of industrial growth along the lower Mississippi River. The terminal would “drain us of all of our resources and all of our quality of life”, Joy said. “The overall goal is to run all of us out.”
Across the South, freetowns – also called Black-founded towns or freedom colonies – are fighting similar kinds of encroachment. Helmed by Black men and women looking to escape slavery and white supremacy, freetowns functioned as autonomous communities, producing their own food and governance and even providing relative safety during the Jim Crow era. Now, many are in the untenable position of having to advocate for their right to have a future. Often, this means uncovering lost histories and genealogies, seeking protection through historic registries and battling local governments, developers and corporations in court. For advocates like the Banners, the effort to maintain a stable status quo can be exhausting.
‘A Black community being literally overshadowed’
Halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Wallace is a quiet community. Small houses line gravel streets that start at the Mississippi River and recede into the abundant farmland. Mammoth live oaks stretch across verdant lawns. The Whitney plantation – now a museum dedicated to educating the public about the institution and legacies of slavery – sits on one side and just upriver is Laura plantation, a tourist destination that bills itself as a “Creole heritage site”. The Banners’ ancestors were enslaved at both.
Since 2021, Greenfield Louisiana LLC has been pushing to construct a 250-acre grain terminal directly beside Wallace’s Black neighborhoods, with some buildings located well within the 2,000ft buffer zone meant to separate residential areas from industry. The facility, which would include a mammoth grain elevator and 54 storage silos as tall as the Statue of Liberty, would transfer and store grain from river barges and load it onto ocean tankers. According to an impact study the Banners commissioned, the proposed buildings are so tall that the neighborhood wouldn’t get morning sunlight until 11am at the earliest and, depending on the season, sometimes as late as 1pm. “[We are] a Black community being literally overshadowed,” said Joy.
Already, the region has the densest concentration of petrochemical plants in the nation, earning it the grim moniker “Cancer Alley”. St John the Baptist parish, where Wallace is located, has the most carcinogenic air in the nation. Just across the Mississippi River, in Revere (another historic freetown), the only neoprene plant in the nation emits known carcinogens: chloroprene and ethylene oxide. In some areas, the cancer risk is 50 times higher than the national average. While a grain terminal might sound benign in comparison, silos and grain elevators release dust, mold, bacteria, rodent feces, shredded metal and silica, all of which pose a significant risk to a community overburdened with respiratory illnesses and cancer.
Over the past three years, the Banner sisters have initiated numerous lawsuits as part of their sustained effort to stop Greenfield Louisiana from building. Their efforts have brought the company under significant public scrutiny. One proposed arrangement has Greenfield transferring ownership of its $479m grain elevator to the Port of South Louisiana and then leasing it back from the publicly owned port, effectively granting the company a $200m tax break. A whistleblower from Gulf South Research Corporation accused Greenfield of pressuring the cultural resource management firm to withhold the results of her survey, which found that proposed facilities would damage cultural resources and potentially disrupt unmarked graves of enslaved people.
The land Greenfield owns was zoned as industrial 33 years ago in a backroom deal that sent the parish president, Lester Millet, who brokered the deal, to prison. Last year, a judge struck down that zoning ordinance, but the parish council is already trying to reinstate it. “They just will not let up no matter what we do,” said Jo. “We went into court. We have lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit … They’re just coming here despite buffer zone requirements, despite ordinances that would protect us.”
As the sisters continue to litigate to stop the grain terminal, they’ve faced increasingly personal threats both inside and outside of the courtroom. One parish council member told Joy she could be arrested for speaking up at a public meeting, intimidation that Joy believes violates her right to free speech (she’s suing). And this past August, a week after the state judge Nghana Lewis issued a restraining order preventing the parish council from rezoning Wallace as industrial, a 350-year-old oak tree in front of the Banner sisters’ Fee-Fo-Lay cafe caught fire.
“Either lightning hit the tree or it’s been really dry [and] someone threw a cigarette butt,” Joy said. “We were trying to convince ourselves … it’s just [the] drought.” But a fire investigator found evidence of an accelerant. The blaze had been started at the base of the tree with a protest sign the sisters displayed in front of their business. “That was a punch to the gut.”
Still, the Banner sisters aren’t letting up. Wallace isn’t just the place where they live. It’s where their ancestors – a group of Union soldiers and newly emancipated people – built a community in the wake of grave violence. And it’s where they and many of their neighbors hope their families will thrive for generations to come. If the grain terminal is built, Joy said: “We are obliterated. We’re gone. We can’t survive.”