Mile 231.9 - LBD Sunrise, Louisiana

231.9 LBD Sunrise, Louisiana

Sunrise was a small town of about 9 “city blocks“ between LA Hwy 1 and the Mississippi River Road at around mile 231.9 LBD. Surrounded by cane fields it had its beginnings in property purchased by former slave Alexander Banes from a white plantation owner. When a railroad ferry located near Sunrise in 1906 it came into its own as a town of a few hundred households. It was a mixed community with residents fondly remembering black and white residents living together in harmony at a time when the same couldn’t be said of many other communities in the south. “This was the oldest integrated neighborhood in the state. We went to segregated schools but we still played together,” said Eloise Ferdinand Jack, a former Sunrise resident interviewed by The Riverside Reader in 1996

An oil refinery was constructed adjacent to the Sunrise community in 1972 and acquired by Placid Refining in 1974. It was said that Placid took low grade crude oil that the Exxon refinery across the river wouldn’t take. In 1979 Amid complaints of decreased quality of life of the nearby residents; Placid began buying out the resident’s closest to the refinery. By 1985 mainly black residents remained in Sunrise who felt that racial inequity was preventing them from being bought out. In 1990 241 remaining residents of Sunrise filed suit against Placid. Eventually the remaining residents of Sunrise negotiated buyouts with Placid and the town was completely gone by the mid 1990’s. Only the street grid between Placid and Enterprise Products Operating LLC (the 2 docks LBD across from the big ExxonMobil dock) and a historical marker remain to remind us of the town of Sunrise. You will read a number of stories like this in the Baton Rouge to the Gulf Section. (LMRK)

A historical marker sponsored by former residents of Sunrise is located just over the levee on River Road where the town used to be. The marker reads:

Side 1:

“A place (not a time of day) of green and golden pages turned slowly enough, to hear the bees whispering in the clover and smell the season of the river in the fog and dust. It must be there still in the trees and the spaces where people live and children play in barefoot memories.”

Side 2:

“In 1874 Alexander Banes, a former slave, purchased property which he sold to Sunrise Realty Co. in 1905. About 1906 the Missouri-Pacific Railroad began using a train-ferry to cross the Mississippi River, causing a great spurt in the population of Sunrise. This marker is a reminder of a community that has gone on, but remains in the happy memories of her descendants.”