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Paper short abstract:

If researchers cannot rely solely on the Archive to understand the complex histories of Black environmental histories and relations, where else might we look? This paper proposes placed ecological histories as a tool to investigate Black environmental relations to place, community, and resistance.

Paper long abstract:

African Americans’ relationships to land, nature, and place has been a complex struggle of life and death, subjugation and freedom, and labor and resistance since the first ship carrying enslaved Africans landed in the American colonies in 1619. The Archive often illustrates these narratives from the perspective of the oppressor, excluding the complex histories of these groups— particularly the histories of the ways Black Americans made place in nature as an act of resistance. If researchers cannot rely solely on the Archive to understand marginalized environmental relations, where else might we look? Looking to more-than-human spaces and artifacts may provide insights into histories that have not yet been encountered. I argue that decentering the Archive and instead focusing on placed ecological histories integral to Black experiences of community and resistance might begin to uncover these silenced histories. I use the Black Belt region of Alabama as a case study to investigate how placed ecological histories can be an alternative tool to the Archive. More specifically, I examine the ecological impact of soil fertility as a determinant of Black environmental relations in the region. I start with the question, how have the ways soil ecologies shifted due to chattel slavery, racial violence, and capitalism map onto the Black body and continue to impact the Black environmental experience? I conclude with a discussion on the importance of looking beyond the Archive as an anti-colonial practice and as a tool for research into counter-hegemonic ways of knowing, being, and resisting.