Dismantling the Master's House: Reparations on the American Plantation.

• Author: Brewington, Jordan

NOTE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 2162 I. HISTORICAL INJUSTICES PERPETUATED BY PLANTATION MUSEUMS 2165 A. Economic Disenfranchisement 2171 B. Narrative Violence 2176 C. Structural Inequity 2178 II. LOCAL REPARATIONS ON THE AMERICAN PLANTATION 2183 A. The Significance of Local Reparations 2183 B. Normative Framework for Local Reparations on River Road 2188 l. Economic Reparations: Financial Compensation and Land 2190 Redistribution 2. Narrative Reparations: Descendants as 2192 Knowledge Producers 3. Systemic Reparations: Descendants as Leaders Within 2195 and Beyond the Plantation III. USING EMINENT DOMAIN TO IMPLEMENT LOCAL REPARATIONS 2197 A. Legal Requirements of Eminent Domain 2198 1. Kelo: The Current Standard 2198 2. A Reparative Reading of Midkiff 2199 3. State Limitations: The Louisiana Constitution 2200 B. Eminent Domain on River Road: Suggesting 2201 Descendant-Controlled Land Redistribution Commissions C. Critiques of the Master's Tools 2203 IV. LESSONS FOR THE BROADER REPARATIONS MOVEMENT 2206 A. Local Reparations in Other Localities 2206 B. Local Reparations and the National Plan for Reparations 2210 CONCLUSION 2212 "I'M HERE ON THIS LAND FOR A REASON. I GREW UP WITH MY FAMILY, CONNECTED TO MY HERITAGE, ALWAYS PROUD OF IT. TO ME, REPARATIONS IS SPIRITUAL. IT COMES BACK TO WHAT OUR ANCESTORS STARTED: THEY DID THE ROOTING FOR US, AND NOW WE NEED TO GROW--WE NEED TO PLANT THE SEED AND WE NEED TO GROW." - DR. JOY BANNER (1) INTRODUCTION

Reparations are acts and processes of repair. They are grounded in the will to heal, to restore a people wounded, but not destroyed, by intergenerational brutality and injustice. Reparationists seek accountability for historic injustice, and call for the cessation of contemporary practices that perpetuate wrongdoings and persecute suppressed communities. Reparative acts are meant to give assurance to survivors that the injustices they have endured "will not be repeated in the future." (2) They ultimately require the redistribution of power, as "efforts to leverage power, influence, and resources ... ensure cessation and non-repetition." (3)

The movement for reparations in the United States began with the demands of the enslaved. Long before the Civil War or the popular abolitionist movement, enslaved people petitioned for individualized compensation for their years spent in bondage. Quock Walker (4) and Belinda Sutton (5) are among the earliest reparations advocates, powerful models of how the "resilient human spirit could not be crushed by slavery." (6)

This courage inspired the demands of the newly freed following the Civil War. Whether seeking compensation for labor that was never paid, (7) or demanding redress for "wrongful enslavement," (8) the formerly enslaved fought for reparations with a conviction that "[s]urely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire." (9)

Their descendants fought on for nearly two-hundred years, seeking reparations for the enslavement of millions of African and African American people. (10) They sought compensation from a variety of institutions, including federal and state governments that relied upon and sustained the institution of slavery, banks and insurance companies that profited from the trade, and educational institutions built and maintained by slave labor. (11) They sought reparations for the harms perpetuated long after emancipation, including systems of convict leasing, Jim Crow segregation, mass criminalization, mass incarceration, "redlining, and other policies of structural discrimination and exclusion." (12)

These descendants are still fighting for reparations. They still demand control over their ancestors' bodies, be it their graves (13) or their images. (14) They are asking for more than acceptance into the institutions that profited off of the enslavement of their foremothers and forefathers. (15) Rather, they seek compensation from American institutions still thriving "on the backs of [their] people." (16)

Descendants are central to a vision of local reparations. As opposed to national reparations, local reparations allow institutions to identify "the exact axes of white supremacy" they perpetuate and develop a tailored "policy [of] repair" to address historical injustice. (17) Local reparations facilitate the deeper work of identifying the harms caused by the evolution of the institution of slavery, pinpointing how every individual has been harmed by that system (even those of us who continue to profit from it), and imagining what we must do to eradicate such harms.

This Note makes the case for local reparations that center descendants living in communities where their ancestors toiled in bondage. In southeastern Louisiana, many plantations remain in operation as plantation museums, reaping profits from tours while perpetuating many of the injustices of slavery and its legacies. These museums operate on the site of both the earliest forms of American enslavement and the continued exploitation of African Americans following emancipation. (18) Therefore, they are a powerful focal point for engagement with local reparations processes. More importantly, reparations on plantations can be grounded in the aspirations of descendants who still live in the communities where their ancestors were enslaved and persecuted. Reimagining the use of eminent domain, I argue that descendants have a powerful case for reparations in the form of redistribution of plantation properties. In turn, local governments can and should break up plantation landholdings for redistribution to descendants.

This Note does not attempt to lay out a comprehensive or generalizable policy plan for reparations, as doing so would undermine the centrality of descendant control over reparations processes. Rather, it responds to the voices of descendants along River Road and sketches the beginnings of a local reparations program for their communities, which may have implications for other jurisdictions and the country as a whole. I begin in Part I by outlining the history of plantations and plantation museums on River Road and illustrate the injustices committed on these plantations from the era of slavery to the present day. In Part II, I highlight the strengths of localized efforts towards racial healing and develop a normative framework for evaluating local reparations programs, an outline which might be utilized in communities across the country where the legacies of slavery similarly continue to manifest. Part III considers eminent domain power from within this framework and describes how it can be used to effectuate the goals of local reparations in southeastern Louisiana. Part IV concludes by exploring the lessons of this analysis for local reparations in other localities and noting how local reparations programs can inform national efforts towards reparative justice.

1. HISTORICAL INJUSTICES PERPETUATED BY PLANTATION MUSEUMS

   Plantations play a central role in the history of slavery and settler colonialism in the United States. "To mark their dominance over both nature and other men," (19) settlers acquired land, often by murdering and displacing Indigenous inhabitants and parceling out native ancestral homelands into residential and agricultural properties. These settlers purchased stolen African men, women, and children to be the primary labor force on plantations, harvesting crops such as cotton, sugarcane, and tobacco to be sold on the global market. After the United States abolished the practice of importing stolen Africans in 1808, the domestic slave trade continued, facilitating the systemic rape of enslaved Black women to produce enslaved children who would maintain and expand the slave population. (20) Though some resisted enslavement through fugitivity or violent revolt, generations of enslaved people lived, labored, and died on plantations across the South leading up to the Civil War.

   During the Civil War, many enslaved people fled to states where slavery was abolished, or journeyed across the nation to reconnect with loved ones who were sold away. Others left the fields to join the Union Army and fight for their freedom. At the end of the war, many formerly enslaved soldiers returned to the plantations of their enslavement only to work for the same families that once held them in bondage. (21) Across the South, many of these labor arrangements were structured by contracts that forced the newly freed to continue living and worldng in the same circumstances--sleeping in the same slave cabins, completing the same grueling work in the fields, living under the constant threat of violence by their former owners--for a meager wage. (22) These wages were insufficient to cover even the most basic needs of Black families, leaving them shaclded to the plantation in perpetual debt. (23) In many cases, these families and their descendants continued this work for more than a hundred years. For instance, at Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, African Americans bore children in former slave cabins and harvested sugarcane until the early 1970S. (24)

   Black labor on plantations rapidly decreased as agricultural mechanization in the twentieth century replaced the need for human labor. (25) Most plantations along River Road "were lost or destroyed over time due to exposure to the elements, misuse, abandonment, river encroachment or industrial expansion." (26) Many rice and sugarcane plantations in southeastern Louisiana also transformed beyond their original agricultural function. "After Reconstruction, a combination of expanding railroads" and "nostalgia for the 'Old South'" transformed many of these plantations into premier tourist destinations. (27)

   In southeastern Louisiana, many plantations still stand along River Road, a route along the Mississippi River that connects former slave ports with the present-day cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. During the era of slavery, nearly every inch of land between...