Endangered African American Historic Sites

On August 6, 2024, port facility Greenfield Louisiana LLC announced that it is abandoning its plans to construct a grain terminal in Wallace, Louisiana in the West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish. The National Trust worked in opposition to the proposed grain terminal for three years in coordination with local allies including the Descendants Project, the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation, the Louisiana Landmarks Society, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, Whitney Plantation, Evergreen Plantation, and many others.

The West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish was included on the National Trust’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2023 due to the potential construction of one of the largest grain elevators in the world within this historic cultural landscape and the substantial adverse effects that construction would have had on multiple nationally significant historic resources.

The West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish has been called “the cradle of Creole culture” and contains a remarkable concentration of nationally significant historic resources that are integral to telling the full American story. Historic villages such as Wallace were founded after the Civil War by Black soldiers who fought in the union army, and many descendants of people enslaved at nearby plantations still call the West Bank home.

The National Park Service is currently in the process of designating the entire West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish as a National Historic Landmark District, and Greenfield’s industrial grain terminal would have been constructed in the heart of it, forever harming this unique cultural landscape.

The National Trust is proud to have fought alongside Louisiana’s historic preservation community in opposition to Greenfield’s proposed terminal. This outcome was achieved in large part through a careful and objective review of the project’s impacts on environmental and cultural resources by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, the Army Corps conducted a meaningful consultation process with a wide variety of stakeholders, to “take into account” the adverse effects of the proposed project on a broad array of historic resources. Greenfield’s abandonment of the proposed terminal confirms the effectiveness of the Section 106 process and demonstrates that the preservation movement is capable of saving our nation’s historic resources from significant threats, even in the face of tremendously powerful opposition.

We are grateful that plans for the grain terminal have been abandoned and we thank all who were involved in this effort.