“Iron Sharpens Iron”, premiering June 8 at The Broad Theater in New Orleans, captures the community of Ironton’s struggles against racism, industrial encroachment, and extreme weather. Located in Plaquemines Parish, Ironton traces its history back to emancipation, with many of the community’s founders having once been enslaved at nearby St. Rosalie Plantation. Their descendants have remained in the area, maintaining a community despite decades of racial segregation and economic injustice.
Directed by filmmaker John Richie and produced by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Iron Sharpens Iron chronicles Ironton’s fight against the development of the Plaquemines Liquids Terminal (PLT) atop land that includes their ancestral burial grounds, as well as the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ida.