In the years following the Civil War, freedmen and freedwomen founded a community close to the Virginia plantations where they had been enslaved. The settlers of Union Hill in Buckingham County, Va., passed down this land over generations to today’s descendants, who are now at the center of a fight to stop a proposed multibillion dollar energy project.

While Union Hill may represent the remarkable history of resilience from our country’s unjust beginnings, it also reveals the country’s continuing imbalance of power and the decisions about whose histories we choose to honor.

Five years ago, Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest investor-owned electric utility, announced plans to build a natural gas-fired compressor station in Union Hill for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The roughly $7.5-billion, 600-mile pipeline is being built by a consortium of four energy companies, with Dominion responsible for its construction and operation, and would run through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. These stations, which compress natural gas so it can flow through pipelines, release toxic emissions such as methane, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter into the air, increasing the health risks for residents who live nearby.

Many in Union Hill responded with fierce opposition but appeals to Dominion, state regulators and Virginia’s governors went unheeded.