By Erica Rigoroso
On March 14th, environmental journalist Rona Kobell spoke at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) about her recently released documentary, Eroding History. The film follows the community of Deal Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and illuminates the rich lives of its residents despite the growing environmental challenges plaguing the area.
Kobell first found a passion in investigating the stories of those affected by environmental racism when writing her master’s thesis at the University of Maryland. Her subject was rural redlining, which is a discriminatory practice in which mortgages and other financial services are withheld from neighborhoods with significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities.
When looking at the process of redlining and its negative effects, Kobell saw how government and institutional practices affected Black neighborhoods and other marginalized communities. She decided that she wanted to increase the visibility of affected communities through her work.
“Now that I see it, I can’t unsee it,” Kobell says of historic racism and its enduring effects.
One of Kobell’s efforts to educate others on the issues was her founding in 2021 {check year} the Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative (EJJI). Her goal was to empower others to tell stories about their communities, and to inspire and mentor the next generation of environmental reporters.
“People don’t want to be studied, they want to be part of a story but don’t want to feel like you’re coming to look at them like a specimen,” Kobell explains. Rather, the goal is to tell their story and connect them with resources to aid them.
Last April, Kobell and her team sought out to make a film illustrating the long-standing effects of sea level rise, historic racism, and the disappearance of Black communities through Deal Island.
In a Q&A after the UMBC film screening in March 2024, nearly a year after the project commenced, Kobell and co-producer Sean Yoes, and director Andre Chung said that Eroding History is one of the few Chesapeake Bay documentaries [DR1] focused on Black stories.
In the film, residents talk about why their ancestors chose to settle on such low-lying land—white people didn’t want it because they couldn’t grow tobacco and other lucrative crops there so it was the only land Black folks could purchase. Today, as sea levels rise, this low-lying land is experiencing the most severe effects of climate change.
Resident Boyd Ducky Wallace of Deal Island states, “With years to come, this [Deal Island] is gonna wash away.” Others describe the island as a “vanishing shared memory.”
One of the issues that Deal Island and its residents face is depopulation within the black community, with the number one cause being residents moving away.
Unlike white communities on the Eastern Shore, black families are more likely to lose their land due to high property taxes, contributing to a loss of heritage and identity with the land they are strongly tied to.
Retired Pastor William Wallace states in the documentary that he “thinks about racism experiences when he thinks of Deal Island.
White communities on the Eastern Shore do not share the same experiences to the extent that the black community experiences. Despite this, these same white communities are much more likely to receive help and visibility from the state of Maryland—something that Deal Island has been struggling with.
Though Kobell and her team paint a clear picture of the struggles that Deal Island residents face in Eroding History, there is still much work to be done to get Deal Island the appropriate support they need.
“People don’t recognize the racism happening on Deal Island,” Kobell said during her talk at UMBC.
By focusing on Deal Island in the film, Kobell, Chung, and Yoes aim to persuade policy makers to grant more funding to address the issues its residents are facing.
[DR1]Could be the only one?
Erica Rigoroso 