“A Vagrant and Fugitive Animal:” Race, Ecology, and The Origins of Louisiana Mineral Law

This talk draws on court cases from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries to elucidate how legal classifications of oil and salt co-evolved with contested definitions of animals, minerals, and enslaved African and African American people in Louisiana. Jurisprudence related to both persons, commodities, and animals will be examined in detail, beginning in 1937 with a Louisiana Supreme Court posthumous ruling over the property of an enslaved woman; dealings of a Confederate colonel and chemist in 1870; and the testimony of an enslaved hunter in 1764. What can early Louisiana mineral law reveal about racialized wealth accumulation, the digestion of the environment itself, and notions of Black personhood over the course of the past three centuries? What are the implications for today’s struggles for racial and environmental justice?