The Mississippi River has long been canonized in American folklore, music, food, art, and culture. From Zora Neale Hurston’s search for learning about Hoodoo in her book Mules and Men (1935), to the rap group U.N.L.V.’s seminal bounce anthem “Drag ‘em to the River” (1996), the Mississippi has served as a backdrop for countless American stories (Hobbs 2015; Saloy 2011). In 1963, Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam” as a response to the killings of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair in Birmingham, Alabama, by White terrorists during the American apartheid era collectively referred to as Jim Crow (Feldstein 2005). Specifically, this song addressed Simone’s frustration with living in a country that viewed the deaths of Black Americans as permissible.

In “Mississippi Goddam,” anti-Black racism and death perpetrated by southern states were considered acceptable then; similarly, anti-Black environmental racism and Black death, via the poisoning of the Mississippi River, are acceptable now. The phrase “Mississippi Goddam” for this paper encompasses the collective frustrations of the authors regarding the deliberate and often overlooked destruction of the Mississippi River throughout New Orleans and its surrounding area, and the role this destruction has played in contributing to the deaths of Black Louisianans.

This paper builds upon previous accounts of the Mississippi River. It examines the ways in which the River and its adjacent waterways have been used as a conduit for environmental racism and, ultimately, Black death. More specifically, using counter-storytelling methods (Richter 2017) and environmental data, this paper provides a contemporary narrative about the increase of pollution in the Bayou resulting from agricultural runoff, industrial activities, and plastics deposits. Concomitantly, this paper reveals how tainted local water supplies are killing Black people throughout communities in New Orleans and the surrounding River Parishes. This paper concludes with policy directives that can serve as starting points to help address, and potentially remedy, the environmental racism levied against Black communities in Louisiana and beyond.

A Picture Too Grim for (Vocal) Words

Imagine for a moment what it must feel like to have your home, the place in which you live, work, and play, referred to as “Cancer Alley” or “Chemical Corridor” (Singer 2011). Can you comprehend the despair that comes with knowing that—of all the places in the country you could call home—you wound up in the state ranked last in overall health (United Health Foundation 2019)? Can you envision the dread that must set in when you realize that by birth, choice, luck, or force, you came to be living in a place where the water you drink comes from the Mississippi River and subsequently makes you 2.1 times more likely to develop cancer than other Americans (Singer 2011)? And what about your children? How do you raise them here knowing that the odds of a bright future, one free of disease, are slim? Can you live like this? Can they?

Now picture yourself as emboldened to seek and demand justice for yourself, your ancestors, your progeny, and your environment. You are on fire for action and recompense, desiring deeply to know why you have been forgotten and why change has not occurred. But you are left powerless. Swayed into inaction by socioeconomic constraints, a fear of being ignored or retaliated against, or a lack of knowledge about the options available to persons in your situation (Lyytimäki et al. 2012; Liyanarachchi and Newdick 2009). So, what do you do? How can you ensure that your future, and the future of your offspring, is as bright as the American Dream promises that it will be (Putnam 2015)? How do you win at the game of life when the cards are stacked against you simply because of three things: the amount of money you have, the color of your skin, and the location in which you happen to reside?

As a poor Black Louisianan, your options are limited. You want to speak up, but your voice is lost among your thoughts as you try and comprehend how to digest a problem that seems larger than life itself. You are drowning in a river of filth and pollution and the life preserver being thrown to you is one covered in the algae of public policies that predate even your own existence. You desire to organize with others in your situation, others who have watched as their communities have been poisoned and overlooked for decades. You recognize that going against an established system is daunting. It takes time and resources. Both of which run scarce in your part of town. So, you simply give up. Giving up is easy. You fall back in line and get on with living. Get on with working. Get on with playing. All the while awaiting destiny to hand you a card. A card that you see coming but that you certainly didn’t ask for. You watch with hardened eyes as your friends, relatives, and neighbors fall ill and perish, knowing that you too will likely suffer the same fate. You try to accept it, though you don’t want to. You are ensconced in pain. The pain is tiring. And because pain is all you know, sitting idly hurts. Years of witnessing the intentional degradation and demise of your community have left your spirit despondent. You are weary and downtrodden, yet the embers of the fire for justice linger in the back of your mind.

We don’t deserve this, you think, reflecting on just how things came to be and what can be done. Every problem has a solution. Those words, ingrained in you over the years, resound loudly in your consciousness. The fire inside has been tossed a log and is ablaze with possibility. You find yourself determined to uncover just what that solution is. Unearthing solutions to the problems plaguing your parish and your people will not be easy, but you’re up for the task. The time is now. You load up your canoe, kiss your family goodbye, and prepare to journey back through space and time. Your voyage will end at the beginning. To fix what is wrong today, you’ve got to make the perilous trip back to the source of it all. You are a poor Black Louisianan, and you are headed to Minnesota, circa 1800.

A Journey Up-, and Then Down-, River Again

Nestled deep within Itasca State Park in northwestern Minnesota lies Lake Itasca, the mother of the mighty Mississippi. Here, the waters that spawn the Mississippi River start out clear and free of toxins before carving their way across 2,300 miles of American soil to the Gulf of Mexico (Newman et al. 2019). By the time the river reaches its destination, it has drained more than 40% of the contiguous US, picking up anything in its path (USEPA 2015). Prior to the eighteenth century, water reaching the Mississippi Delta from the upper portions of the River would have contained effluence mainly in the form of sediments that were washed away during rain events or sloughed from the riverbanks by the flowing waters. In the early 1800s, European colonizers brought major changes to the Mississippi through development along the River (Wiener and Sandheinrich 2010). Damming operations on the Missouri River, which meets the Mississippi just north of what is now the St. Louis metro area, helped to reduce the influx of sediments into the Mississippi. These operations were carried into the Mississippi where damming provided newly accessible irrigation water to surrounding farmlands, leading to a regional agricultural explosion. Dams also offered downriver communities protection from flooding and the ability to generate power via hydroelectricity (Alexander et al. 2012). While industries and growing urban communities benefited greatly from dam construction, there was one group who suffered greatly: the Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians.

In 1852, a proposal was put forth to build dams at the headwaters of the Mississippi to create reservoirs. Dam construction began in 1881 at Lakes Winnibigoshish and Leech to improve the River's navigability during low-water events. At that time, the Chippewa were a group of approximately 1,300 people who once owned the lands at the headwaters. They had ceded their land to the government and were relocated to small reservations along the River. Construction of the dams brought flooding to the reservations, resulting in the destruction of crops and local fisheries, loss of land, removal of trees, and an influx of disease (i.e. smallpox believed to have been brought in by White construction workers). The Chippewa demanded that construction cease and that they be paid damages of $500,000 annually. A cost-benefit analysis ultimately determined that halting construction would be more costly than paying damages to the Chippewa, and construction continued. Eventually, the Indigenous people were given a $150,000 settlement for damages and were left with approximately 47,000 acres of flooded and damaged land, much of which they ceded back to the government. Extreme poverty plagued the Chippewa until around 1930, when European settlers to the expanding urban areas around the dammed lakes complained of trapped and dying fish in the reservoirs. Locks and dams built farther south along the Mississippi River eliminated the need for water releases from the dams at Lakes Winnibigoshish and Leech, and water levels returned to normal. As a result, economic conditions for the Chippewa began to improve, particularly for those located around Lake Leech. Despite the terrible losses suffered, the government and urbanites believed all was well in the Mississippi River Valley (Merritt 1984). Damages had been paid to Indigenous peoples, and life was resuming under a new normal. As engineering advancements and continued dam construction made the already navigable waters more attractive, however, the condition of the River began to decline. Population growth and industrial activities brought an increase in pollution that is still plaguing the River today.

The influx of anthropogenic pollutants into the Mississippi River dates back to the late 1800s, when sawdust and wastes from lumber factories in Minnesota were disposed of via direct dumping into the River. The quantity of sawdust discharged into the water was so great that boats began having difficulty navigating through the maze of sawdust bars that coagulated throughout the River like blood clots in an open wound. By 1880, the problem had grown so large that legislation to regulate the disposal of sawdust into the River was drafted. Introduced in Congress on January 15, 1880, the bill, H.R. 3535, was designed to “protect and promote the navigability of the navigable rivers of the United States,” prioritizing industrial and recreational interests over ecological integrity (Merritt 1984). Protecting profits appeared to be the overarching theme of river regulation in the 1800s. The idea of reducing the influx of sawdust for the preservation of economic interests was so great that in 1883 Professor James A. Dodge of the University of Minnesota wrote:

Now I do not enter into a discussion of the question [of] whether the sawdust which is thrown into the Mississippi at this place may prove to be of any detriment to the navigation of the river, or may cause disadvantage in any other way… But at all events we see this immense amount of material being constantly thrown away; and if it is capable of being utilized with profit, we should naturally like to see it so utilized. (281)

Thus, the conditions were set for polluters to overlook the long-term ecological and biological impacts of polluting the Mississippi River. So long as economic gains continued, pollution appeared only to matter if it caused direct, visible effects on the River at a local level. After all, the water flowed south, moving pollution and pollution-laden sediments along with the current. As the pollutants and sediments moved south, some would become trapped by the River’s dams and reservoirs. What remained suspended in the waters beyond the dams would eventually be deposited in the Delta region (Meade 1995). Thus, water pollution was more of a problem for those living in communities downriver than for the upriver industries responsible for the pollution discharges.

Outta Sight, Outta Mind…Kinda

As established settlements along the Mississippi River began to transform into sprawling farms and densely populated urban areas, the River would begin to see pollutants from a variety of sources. During the 1900s, the River, which had previously encountered contaminants only from sawmills and boats, was now faced with the accumulation of debris and toxins from agricultural runoff, industrial and chemical production facilities, and municipal sources (Porter et al. 2015; Allen 2006; Santschi et al. 2001). Agricultural activities were, and continue to be, the primary contributor of nonpoint source nutrients, chemicals, and sediments to the Mississippi (Secchi and Mcdonald 2019). The growth of urban populations along the River led to the development of sewage systems to accommodate the wastes these populations generated. Sewage was regularly discharged directly into the Mississippi River, resulting in fish die-offs and diminished water quality for downriver communities (Theiling 1999).

Clearcutting to fuel the growing lumber industry and make room for expansion resulted in soil instability and increased the amount of sediment deposited into the River (Fremling 1960). Over the past several decades, improper disposal of plastics into the Mississippi River and its watershed have resulted in the accumulation of plastic pollution and microplastics (plastic particles less than five millimeters in size) throughout the River and the Delta (McCormick et al. 2014). Nearly 40% of all the plastic pollution entering the Gulf of Mexico comes directly from the Mississippi River (Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative 2020). These factors, in addition to a lack of environmental regulation, resulted in a decrease in the health of the River and River-adjacent communities, particularly in areas downstream of the pollution sources. US Geological Survey (USGS) scientists sampling the lower Mississippi over a 20-year period observed decreasing water quality, mainly attributed to urban and agricultural activities (Howard 2014), while reports of elevated levels of cancer and disease rose among river parish communities (Perera and Lam 2013). For residents in these contaminated regions, discovering cancer-causing pollution and tainted water in their backyards is a difficult and frustrating pill to swallow. Finding out that some of the most harmful contaminants in the water originated decades ago or from hundreds or thousands of miles away is even more challenging.

Legacy pollutants from industrial and chemical activities such as mercury, lead, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and DDT (banned in Mississippi in 1972) originating from the upper portions of the Mississippi River would eventually move their way south, landing in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. These pollutants, carried in association with the sediments suspended throughout the water, would cause disruptions to the health of humans and the health and reproduction of wildlife, namely fish and aquatic birds (Wiener and Sandheinrich 2010; Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality 2014). Concerns regarding the chemicals entering the watershed first arose following World War II. As the wildlife populations living in, on, and around the Mississippi River continued to decline, the fears of the public regarding water quality and public and environmental health grew. It would take the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the Clean Water Act (CWA) in the 1970s for the conditions of water resources, wildlife, and people in water-adjacent areas to have any hope of improving (Caffey et al. 2002). The CWA established pollution discharge and monitoring protocols for point source pollution, including the setting of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for pollutants entering water bodies. Though the EPA was assigned as the governing authority, the establishment of CWA protocols came at the discretion of individual states, many of which failed to include the Mississippi River in their water quality monitoring plans. Factors such as the size of the River and the prevalence of large amounts of nonpoint source pollution make monitoring and oversight difficult. Improvements in water quality that should result from the enforcement of the CWA are not observed river wide (National Research Council 2008), particularly in Louisiana where the lower stretches of the River meet the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile in Louisiana…

From the transportation of enslaved Africans to the establishment of Black communities along its shore after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Mississippi River played an integral role in shaping Louisiana’s history and economy (Johnson 2017). Historically, the River served as an intercoastal waterway, allowing goods and people to be transported across several states and to the Gulf of Mexico. As Louisiana’s economy shifted away from sugarcane cultivation toward the production of petrochemicals, tax credits incentivized several industrial chemical companies to establish operations adjacent to the predominantly Black parishes that line the River throughout the state. While the companies thrived, the residents suffered. Due to the River’s overexploitation, pollution, land loss, and politics, Black communities along the southern stretches of the River faced, and continue to face, an insurmountable amount of environmental racism (McQuaid 2000).

With navigable waters, an abundance of natural resources, and a prime location at the intersection of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana quickly became a sought-after region for late-nineteenth-century industrial operations, particularly by petrochemical companies. Along the newly formed Mississippi River Industrial Corridor, the rise of the petrochemical industry brought with it a rise in toxic pollutants (Agyeman et al. 2003). As these companies began dumping toxic wastes into the River and emitting noxious pollutants into the air, the effects compounded as the toxins mixed with those originating from much further upriver (Russell 2019). Exposure to various cancer-causing pollutants quickly became a part of everyday life for many of the neighboring Black communities, particularly impoverished ones. New Orleans’s drinking water was regularly described as having an “oily-petrochemical” scent, and fish from the River could not be sold due to the flesh tasting of oil and chemicals (Keiser and Shapiro 2019). Despite environmental regulations, the water continued to be poisoned. Because of this, the prevalence of various cancers, including lung, stomach, kidney, and other chemical-related ailments, such as respiratory diseases, in residents of riverside and coastal townships has starkly increased (Keehan 2018).

For years, Cancer Alley and the Mississippi River Industrial Corridor have been Louisiana’s quintessential representation of environmental injustice/racism. Studies have indicated an increase in environmental injustice in seven parishes due to elevated levels of toxic emissions from the petrochemical plants (Perera and Lam 2013). Petrochemicals are not the only contributing factors to the growing rates of disease and death in the Bayou. As some Black communities face dangers from industrial companies, others face threats posed by climate change and runoff from agriculture practices that ultimately have left them highly vulnerable to the impacts of pollution increases in the communities in which they reside (Agyeman et al. 2003). In August 2020, during what was identified as an “extreme plastics pulse event” (Liang et al. 2021), a shipping container carrying plastic polymer beads, or nurdles, overturned in New Orleans. The result was nearly 25 tons of nurdles entering the Mississippi River. These nurdles would land along the beaches, float toward the Gulf of Mexico, or wind up in the digestive tracts of animals who had mistaken the nurdles for food. The cleanup of this environmental disaster was left chiefly in the hands of local, grassroots organizations as no legal determination of responsibility for the spill was made. The shipping company whose container fell into the River hired a company to begin waste management and cleanup, but efforts were insufficient (Baurick 2020; Dermansky 2020). The nurdle spill and failed remediation post-spill only further demonstrate the lack of accountability for polluters and the need for greater regulation in matters related to pollution in the Mississippi River and the communities these pollutants impact (Baurick 2020).

One Set of Laws to Rule Them All

In January 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 13990, which aimed to push climate change and environmental justice to the forefront of public policy (Council on Environmental Quality 2021). Specifically, the Executive Order proposes that the Secretary of the Interior stop the issuance of new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters. In President Biden’s press conference held on January 27, 2021, he stated that the pause on new gas and oil leases will seek to provide environmental justice for fence-line communities, and hard-hit areas like Cancer Alley, Louisiana (Biden 2021). Moreover, fence-line communities will receive 40% of the benefits of key federal investments related to clean energy, clean water, and wastewater infrastructure under this new legislation (Montag 2019).

Although the Biden Administration has not provided specific guidelines on how to achieve cleaner water and energy, one policy initiative that would support this Executive Order’s mission, and directly benefit Black communities along Cancer Alley, is the implementation of a Mississippi River-specific amendment to the Clean Water Act. The amendment would create stricter regulations on the amount and type of pollutants discharged into the River. Additionally, a federally mandated and regulated pollutant monitoring plan for the River should be implemented. Such a plan would ensure the maintenance of pollutant levels at or below each threshold, or the point at which additional exposure results in ecological and biological effects and toxicity (USEPA 2017). Presently, the CWA fails to achieve broad-spectrum threshold maintenance and pollution mitigation for the Mississippi River, as water quality monitoring and assessment lie in the hands of the states individually (National Research Council 2008).

Additional policy initiatives should include a revision of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) air quality standards to include all carcinogenic chemicals emitted by industrial companies and reduce thresholds for all pollutant emissions. Currently, elevated levels of carcinogenic chemicals, including chlorine and ethylene dioxide, are present along Cancer Alley but are not regularly monitored by either the EPA or Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (Keehan 2018). These policy initiatives could ultimately lead to lower exposure rates to specific pollutants in the Black communities, thus decreasing the high mortality rates linked to the pollution along the southern Mississippi River.

One policy initiative that could drastically reduce the quantities of plastics produced and used is a plastic tax for both consumers and manufacturing companies. This tax would function as an incentive for companies to research plastic alternatives, as the increased costs of producing products made of or stored in plastic would trickle down to the consumer, thus potentially reducing the demand for plastic products. A prime example of the effectiveness of such a tax can be observed in Ireland, where the implementation of the Waste Management Act of 1996 imposed a plastic bag levy on manufacturers. The costs associated with this levy ultimately trickled downstream to consumers, and as a result, Ireland saw a 90% decrease in plastic bag usage (Convery and McDonnell 2003). Similarly, cities across the United States are starting to implement plastic bag taxes. The City of Chicago implemented such a tax in 2017 and saw a 28% decrease in plastic bag usage in the first year (Homonoff 2018). A reduction in plastic demand would reduce the production of plastic materials, which would lessen the plastic-related toxins released into the air and the Mississippi River. Through this process, fewer carcinogenic discharges would be released into Cancer Alley and the predominantly Black communities found therein.

When Enough Really Isn’t Enough

Though the solutions appear simple enough, the path to environmental justice and the preservation of lives is one paved with the red tape of bureaucracy and corporate interests. The desire for increased profits ultimately led to the degradation of the Mississippi and the deaths of Black residents in Louisiana River Parishes. One way to ensure that environmental justice is served in the Bayou is to create legislation aimed directly at the purse strings of polluters. Even then, will tougher legislation and taxes be enough to bring about lasting change? In Mossville, Louisiana, located roughly 200 miles west of New Orleans, decades of industrial activities brought an increase in cancer and disease to the residents of this mostly Black community. Though the industrial and petrochemical companies responsible for poisoning the people were operating within the law, Mossville residents were able to mobilize and make their voices heard at the national level.

In 2005, a petition was presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) by a New Orleans law firm on behalf of community members of Mossville. Residents sought recompense to relocate away from polluted communities and asked for monies to be allocated towards providing healthcare for residents impacted by industrial pollution. This petition also called for environmental regulatory reform at the national level (Hines 2015).

By using a combination of education, awareness, networking, and proactive thinking, the residents were able to have their issues acknowledged and recognized nationally (Hines 2015). While legislation and taxes may not be enough to move industries to change and for polluters to correct their bad habits, a change must come. The cries of the people need to be centered and heard. The solutions to the problems require giving voices to the voiceless. The people must be made aware of the environmental racism being directed at their communities and be empowered to fight for their rights to clean air, land, and water. As Dr. Joy Banner, a community activist and resident of Wallace, Louisiana, located 175 miles southeast of Mossville, says, “Speaking out is scary, but I would rather suffer through those moments than risk having to lose my home and my community” (Haimerl 2022). If the Mossville community was able to seek and demand justice, so too can any community suffering a similar plight.

It’s Almost Over

As you return from your 300-year-, 2,300-mile-long adventure back to the literal and figurative end of the Mississippi River, you understand that losing your voice would be akin to signing the death certificates of yourself and those around you. One glance at the water’s edge causes a flood of emotion to wash over. There is something cathartic in the realization that water, the very thing you need to survive, depends upon you for its survival. The reciprocity of the relationship is strong. You protect the water; the water protects you. Just as runaway enslaved Blacks fled to the River to escape life in bondage (Zeisler-Vralsted 2019), you and your people must turn to the River for the hope of a brighter tomorrow. With your life, your children’s lives, the lives of your family, friends, and neighbors all resting in the hands of oil conglomerates and corporations who care more about profit than they do people, the time to seek justice and act is now. One phone call may be all that is required to send the ripples of change rolling across the land and rippling through the water. It’s time to speak up and you are ready to sound the alarm. As you reach into your pocket to retrieve your phone, the words of Nina Simone ring loud and clear in your mind.

“Why don't you see it

Why don't you feel it

I don't know

I don't know

You don't have to live next to me

Just give me my equality

Everybody knows about Mississippi

Everybody knows about Alabama

Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!”

(Simone 1964)

You smile and nod as you prepare to become a crusader for justice and a steward of change. Your journey is complete. But it has only just begun...

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by FAMU ADVANCE and the Center for Faculty ADVANCEment at FAMU (NSF Award HRD-1824267).

Notes