PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. — A community in Plaquemines parish is on a mission to preserve its history and honor the men and women who settled there in the late 1800’s. But community members say the journey hasn’t been easy.
In a small church in the community of Oakville, Alan Green and Rose Jackson poured over stacks of old tattered documents and a census record from 1920.
“That was my mother’s mother,” said Green as he looked at the names in the census ledger.
Oakville is a small community that sits roughly 20 miles down Louisiana Highway 23 in Plaquemines Parish.
“When I think about Oakville,” said Green. “I could talk about Oakville all day.”
Founded in 1869, Green said Oakville was where free men and women settled after slavery was abolished.
“People were coming from different plantations,” he said. “We had Sarah plantation, Live Oak plantation, so a lot of slaves came from over there.”
Green believes there is a reason they chose Oakville.
“The settlement was up and growing at the time, and I guess it had a lot of workers because I look back at some of the records and it looks like Oakville was larger than what we see right now.
Although it's gotten smaller over the years the spirit of their fight has grown.
“My husband didn't want to live anywhere else,” said Rose Jackson, who moved to Oakville 66 years ago. “He wanted to live, and continue living in Oakville, where he was born and raised.”
Jackson said she quickly learned to love the community and thirty years in she formed the Oakville Community Action Group to fight against a proposed landfill right next to the neighborhood.
“I fought tooth and nails until I got some action,” said Jackson. “The longer that I fought with it, the more I felt empowered to really get this finished.”
Jackson credits Tulane, Loyola and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network for helping the residents of Oakville. Some of them came back to the community in the spring when a new company petitioned to have Oakville’s zoning changed to commercial for a proposed temporary housing park.
"I totally feel we have taken advantage of these communities,” said David Clark, who spoke in support of the community. “We need to stop. We need to go to these other communities that live a mile or a half mile away and have a voice in shutting down a project like this. These guys in their backyard they got to bring a whole community out here to shut this kind of stuff down."
The residents won during that meeting but say the threat to disrupt the community’s make-up always lingers.
“What we are trying to do is to keep the overlook of our children, the benefit of raising our kids and grandkids here, we want change, but we don't want that type of change,” said Jackson.
Now the hope is that the state will formally recognize the community as historic.
“That cemetery back there, it's on this map from 1869,” said Green. “So we want that to be recognized as a historical cemetery, because we have a lot of soldiers that deployed in World War I and II back in that cemetery, black soldiers, highly decorated.”
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