n the morning I set out for Maringouin, the night uncurled her gray fingers to reveal the soft light of dawn. The heat of summer had yet to reach the Southern landscape and the morning still whispered of that "too cold to be Florida" winter of 2025. I took the trip alone, my passengers seat empty except for my hand-me-down leather purse, an heirloom from my mother, and my oversized flannel-lined denim jacket. Adia Victoria's Southern Gothic album spilled from my speakers with songs of Southern roots and reclamation, magnolias and resurrection. I sang along, the familiar words falling from my lips as the road sparse with other travelers so early in the morning  stretched and morphed into humid exhales of wetlands. 
         When I chose the topic of my Capstone as an examination of Black Americans’ relationship or disruption of that relationship with nature, I knew I would need home to the distinctively cultural time capsule 

 

 

Maringouin, Louisiana is an isolated bayou town in Iberville Parish where history and the present are plaited as one. The Mississippi soaked soil carries the rich culture of Black rural life in its sediment and is darkened with the blood of those who labored and died on the plantations that carved up the bayou  land. Largely neglected and forgotten by the oil refinery filled banks of the Mississippi in neighboring towns, the current and previous residents of Maringouin maintain their distinct traditions and preserve and through connection the earth. and the relationship between Southern Black culture and nature stands unyielding like a sturdy bald cypress. History gathers around every bend of the sprawling red dirt roads, and the phantom of slavery still lingers in the leaning bodies of gutted sharecropper homes.

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The two sides of my family tree canopy the roads of this town. Divided by plantation lines, they are just as deeply rooted in the marsh lands as the massive roots of a Spanish Oak.​ As a child, I ran through rows of towering corn and picked fresh figs at my step grandmother’s house for canning. I knew the smell of coming summer rains and how to peel sugar cane without cutting myself with a rusty cane knife.

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As I have grown, I have learned that my family history, my heritage, is unique. There was never any room in my grandmother's house for the outside world's shame and projections of antiblackness, not when Florida Water washed kitchen floors taught me to love the skin I'm in. So shielded was I by the lace curtains of familial pride and courage, that I was never forced to look upon the phantoms of burned crosses in the yard. I've dug my feet into the soils of my family's land. I've grown to love the Earth for its reflected fight to exist against the pillaging of colonialism. A determination that prevails by spreading roots of love for life and all that is living while embracing the pains of growing. 

 

​With each passing generation, the connection to our family histories grows thin as does that to the earth. As I look upon the budding youth of the following generations and the ever growing white paint brush expunging Black history from existence, I realized, for the sake of cultural survival, these stories must be preserved and treasured. My family’s story has significance in unearthing what has been lost and instilling pride in place of shame towards the struggles of our forefathers and mothers. If we as a people wish to heal, we must first reroot ourselves in the lands that gave us life. This is the story of my homecoming.