Orange Grove
Orange Grove Plantation and Cemetery
by Katy Morlas Shannon, Master of Arts degree in History
April 19, 2024
The property now leased or owned by Air Products Blue Energy, LLC and slated for industrial development was originally the land of the Houmas Tribe. After a questionable property transaction, the Tribe relocated and the land was turned into one of the largest sugar plantations in the area, known as Orange Grove Plantation, where hundreds of people were enslaved for at least a fifty-year period. The plantation was run by absentee owners for most of its existence, which fostered horrific conditions and abuse. Those who were enslaved and died at the plantation would be buried there, along with their children—many of whom did not survive infancy. Plantation laborers who lived on the property after slavery was abolished would have been buried at the plantation site also. All who died there would have been buried at the Orange Grove Cemetery identified on current maps, or in other areas of the plantation that have not yet been identified as a burial ground.
Think you may have a connection or be a descendant of Orange Grove?
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In the US state of Louisiana, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a heavily industrialized ‘Petrochemical Corridor’ overlays a territory formerly known as ‘Plantation Country’. In the region’s majority-Black communities, residents – descendants of people historically enslaved on the same land – breathe some of the most toxic air in the country and suffer one of the highest risks of cancer, along with other serious health ailments.
As industrial development pollutes their air, it also threatens the burial grounds of their ancestors.