Pipeline tells Black Memphis landowners: sell us the rights to your land or get sued

The legal battle over Byhalia pipeline has become a flashpoint in the conversation about environmental justice and the right of energy companies to take private land

This story is a collaboration between Southerly, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and the Guardian.

The only things Karmen Johnson-Tutwiler has left to remind her of her mother are a few photographs and just under a quarter acre of land covered in bramble and wildflowers that backs up to a railroad track. When her mother, Sharon Watson, died in 2010, she and her sister inherited it. She always told me it was important to have a piece of property as your own," Johnson-Tutwiler said.