| Abstract | In southeastern Louisiana, many plantations still stand along River Road, a
stretch of the route lining the Mississippi River that connects the former slave ports and presentday cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Black communities along River Road have long experienced these plantations as sites of racialized harm. This Note constructs a normative framework for local reparations that centers these descendant communities and explores the use of eminent domain to break up the landholdings of current plantation owners to make those lands
available to descendants. Beyond the descendants in Louisiana’s river parishes, this Note is aimed
at inspiring a discussion about reparations in other local contexts—across institutions, cities, and
states—that are also sites of historical and continued subjugation. |
