“There Are Lives Here”

Abstract

Abstract The Bonnet Carré Spillway, a mile-long concrete and wood weir in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, is embedded in a landscape of flood control infrastructure and an institutionally repressed history of the Black communities displaced for its construction from 1929 to 1931. Two cemeteries of enslaved and formerly enslaved people were plowed under and then resurfaced decades later, prompting a movement for commemoration led by descendants. Through histories of both the spillway structure and that of enslaved and formerly enslaved communities, this article examines a growing movement for commemoration that challenges and dismantles the political infrastructure generated by and for the preservation of physical infrastructure.