Mapping the Black Belt

Mapping The Black Belt: Colonial Continuums, Racialized Ecologies, And Radical Repair is part of my doctoral research. This project is grounded in the understanding that the impact of the exploitation and extractive practices of slavery was not limited to shaping Black life (and death), but also remade and reorganized ecological systems. I use this framework to first interrogate the spatial relationship between Blackness and the environment in the Black Belt region of Alabama. Thinking from within fugitive/surplus/abandoned Black spaces allows me to conceptualize Black spatial and environmental practices from the perspective of those who are situated in the wake of slavery and who live on the same land as their ancestors who were enslaved.

This project examines the ecological histories of the Black Belt region of Alabama and the present-day realities of environmental racism and the climate crisis faced by predominantly Black, rural, and low-income communities in the region. The Black Belt is a region where the carceral logics of the slave plantation are often still present in the industries, ecologies, and infrastructures of the rural landscape. I interrogate this colonial continuum of extraction and abandonment by attempting to map Black spatial realities and Black Belt ecologies together. I use an interdisciplinary approach to accomplish this research by combining mapping, spatial analysis, archival work, and testimonies to examine and visualize these relations.

This project was made possible in part by the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Grant #2025-012.