Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
For over one hundred years after the end of slavery, sugar plantations in Louisiana continued to operate using resident laborers descended from enslaved people. Though cane workers were free men and women, sugar planters created structures of power and oppression that ensured a stable workforce and made it difficult for workers to leave. Whitney Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish was one such plantation. It operated from 1752 until 1973 with laborers, overseers and owners who descended from Antebellum forebears. In the twentieth century as the oil, gas and petrochemical industries developed in Louisiana, Whitney became surrounded by heavy industrial plants that changed the culture and the environment. In the late twentieth century, sugar plantations in southern Louisiana had largely been bought out by heavy industry or turned into tourist sites for leisure travelers. Both fates befell Whitney: In 1990, a Taiwanese chemical company purchased the property build a major rayon factory while operating the Big House as a plantation museum. After that plan fell through, in 1999, John Cummings purchased the property to turn it into a museum of slavery. Grass, Scrap, Burn is a study of three major contours that shaped Louisiana sugar plantations after the Civil War – labor, the environment, and memory – as seen through the lens of Whitney Plantation and the surrounding west bank of St. John the Baptist Parish.
Date
7-13-2024
Recommended Citation
Rogers, Ashley, "Grass, Scrap, Burn: Labor, Environment and Memory at Whitney Plantation, 1865-1992" (2024). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6538.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6538
Committee Chair
Alecia Long
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.6538