Bill before Louisiana legislature aims to preserve, protect slave burial sites

Sorry for the long post but there is a lot going on with this and it is a Saturday after all. TL-DR: Bunch OT property owners fixing to get screwed by the state.

While sounding good on its face, it turns out that most of these sites are on private property. The ultimate goal of this legislation is to require landowners to basically abdicate any land that had a slave buried on it, require access be granted to the site for preservation-historical study-tourism use and prohibit the land owner from doing anything with the land. I would say there is zero chance that our broke arse state will fairly compensate a land owner for the property even if they decided to go that route. Top it off that there isn’t a single legislator who is going to stand up in a public forum and call out the issues with this bill for fear of the “racist” label. It has already cleared Committee on a unanimous vote. Anyone else see this as a really bad idea? FWIW, this all got started because Shell recognized that one large site on its land and fenced it off. Now the activists say there are potentially hundreds of sites that deserve the same treatment. Give an inch, get demands for miles.

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A month after the dedication of two cemeteries in Ascension Parish that contain as many as 1,000 unmarked slave graves, the Legislature is taking steps to preserve and protect such sites in Louisiana.

A bill introduced by Rep. Ken Brass, D-Vacherie would create a special commission tasked with coming up with measures to identify historic cemeteries where former slaves and free people of color were buried, give them special recognition and designate them as tourist attractions.

Louisiana is dotted with unmarked graves and neglected cemeteries where formerly enslaved black men, women and children were buried, and advocates say that it’s past time to give them the recognition and respect they didn't get in life.

“We bury our animals better than what we've done for these people,” local genealogist Debbie Martin said.

Martin has mapped out more than 3,000 burials of black people in nearly 30 cemeteries hidden in secluded woods near sugar cane fields in West Baton Rouge Parish. She’s been archiving and cleaning up these neglected cemeteries through her nonprofit organization, The Westside Cemetery Preservation Association.

"This is extremely important," Rep. Pat Smith, D-Baton Rouge, said in response to the bill. "This is truly commemorating history. There are cemeteries we don't know about all over this state."

Hambrick and others believe there could be hundreds of cemeteries throughout rural Louisiana, mostly near lands where plantations once stood. Some are still in used as farmland, but other parcels have been purchased by industry.

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