The oil industry built a Black enclave in Texas. A century later, residents face a climate, housing and health crisis.
While the energy industry is still the largest employer, residents say Black representation in the plants has dwindled. Today, Black workers in the oil and chemical plants surrounding Beaumont are much more likely to be contract employees than full-time workers, thus not receiving the stability of regular pay and the protections from constant physical health threats.
There are only two ways to escape, residents say; you have flood or wind insurance and a hurricane floods your house or sends a tree crashing through your roof; or one of the area’s many industrial companies decides they want to expand and offers to buy you out of your land. But many residents don’t have insurance because they’ve lived in these homesteads for generations, meaning they’ve owned their homes long before certain mortgages required insurance.
On a weekday morning in March, Joseph Lartigue stood outside tinkering with his truck as a string of blue tarp tucked around his roof swayed with the breeze, a product of damage from Hurricane Harvey six years ago. Despite the long-lasting damage, the regular train bells that wake him up at 4 a.m., and the constant smell of “cat litter” from the refinery, Lartigue has no desire to leave.
So some landowners have decided to hold on to their land, regardless of whether a hurricane or wear and tear required them to knock down their homes. Almost every day, Bettis says, a group of four to five men set up a card table and hang out on an empty lot they own across the street from her house. “They won’t ever sell their property to [Exxon]Mobil because they saw people didn’t get paid what they were supposed to get paid,” she explained.
Leslie raised her children in the neighborhood, but the now-retired woman would gladly leave —- if someone would buy her property. When ExxonMobil bought out dozens of properties in the neighborhood in the early 2000s, Leslie says the company “jumped over” her and “went and got the houses next door.”
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