"We are in Wolf Town, distant past to 1977.

Before DeLisle was named DeLisle after a French settler, the early settlers called it Wolf Town.

Pine and oak and sweet gum grow in tangles from the north down to the south of the town to the DeLisle Bayou.

The Wolf River, brown and lazy, snakes its way through DeLisle, fingers the country in creeks before emptying into the bayou.

When people ask me about my hometown, I tell them it was called after a wolf before it was partially tamed and settled.

I want to impart something of its wild roots, its early savagery.

Calling it Wolf Town hints at the wildness at the heart of it."

There are graves all through here, through this wooded area, and like as you can see right here, the Black people like were buried here in the back of the graveyard.

And so the tree line sort of separated the front, which is like the white section from the back, which is the Black section.

And see, it makes me worried, like even now when I'm walking, it makes me worried that I'm walking over someone and I don't even know it.

I remember being shocked when I came here for the first time because, [deep sigh] because I had naively assumed, [laughs] you know, that death was like the great equalizer, right?

And so it was just sort of shocking to come here and see, you know, like the final resting places of, you know, my family members would be erased.

It's just heartbreaking because I feel like this happens all the time, you know, like there's this erasure of people, this erasure of the past, this erasure of these like lived histories, right?

And so I wanna push back against that, right, because it shouldn't happen.

[somber music]