Energy, Climate, & Insurgent Ecologies: New Directions in Black Environmental History

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

For some time, environmental historians and scholars of African American history did not seem to have much to say to one another. But no longer. A growing number of scholars are placing the environment at the center of Black history, and in the process are reshaping our understanding of the Black past and what environmental history can be. This panel presents new research covering the broad sweep of African American history—from slavery to the present—and showcases some of the latest research trends in environmental history. Kathryn Benjamin Golden explores the “insurgent ecology” of enslaved Black women in Great Dismal Swamp, demonstrating how Black women reimagined wetlands landscapes, deemed uninhabitable by white enslavers, into sites of communal health and nourishment. Eric Herschthal argues that enslaved Black plantation workers in the Thirteen Colonies were among the first “carbon conscripts”—racially exploited workers whose coerced labor was central to the expansion of the emergent nation’s carbon footprint. Myriah Martin examines the ways archaeologists and public historians are using historically preserved plantations to uncover slavery’s links to climate change and reimagine sustainable land-use practices. Gwendolyn Wallace offers a multispecies energy history of South Carolina’s Santee Cooper Basin, investigating how a centuries-long home for African Americans became, during the New Deal era, the location of a massive hydroelectric plant that brought work and electricity to thousands of South Carolinians, while displacing hundreds of Black families. Taken together, these papers demonstrate how environmental approaches to Black history are enriching our understanding of the Black past and a more sustainable future.

Sub Unit

• 110th ASALH Annual Conference

Chair

• J.T. Roane, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Individual Presentations

• “Black Women in Flux: Woods, Water, and the Insurgent Ecology of the Great Dismal Swamp” - Kathryn E Benjamin Golden

• “Carbon Conscripts: Enslaved Women’s Labor and the Origins of Climate Change in the Colonial Chesapeake” - Eric Herschthal, University of Utah

• "Museum in Color: Building Pathways to Professionalism for Cultural Workers Through Research and Community" - Myriah Martin

• "'They're Gonna Build a River': Race, Energy, and Arboreal Continuance in the Santee Cooper Basin" - Gwendolyn Wallace, Massachusetts Institute of Technology