BATON ROUGE - Scotlandville is a place that many people carry close to their hearts like a badge of honor. 

"It's truly home to me," says Howard Davis, a Scotlandville native and former principal of the Scotlandville High School. 

A place filled with legacy, rooted in history. It's the driving force that keeps the Scotlandville pride so strong. 

"This is the highest ground, this is the bluff. This is where the native Americans put the baton into the ground and said, 'This is Baton Rouge,'" Pat McCallister-LeDuff, a longtime resident, said.

However, the Black History of Scotlandville started in the 1800s when Scoot's Bluff was the entry point to the slave trade. Over time, things changed. In the 1900s, it became the largest majority African American town in Louisiana. 

"We had the cab stand, we had the stores, we had the motel, we had our own bus line, we had everything we needed in the village," McCallister-LeDuff said.

The area was booming with Black-owned businesses, homeowners, and men who worked on the railroad.

"They didn't really get paid, but they were able to get parcels of land in exchange for the work they did to bring in the railroad through Scotlandville," he said.

Over the years, the area has been fighting racism, inequality, and oppression. 

"And then we end up with a neighborhood of undeserved people with drug issues, I wouldn't say by choice, but by demand," McCallister-LeDuff said.

But people have been actively working to fix the problems. The city recently broke ground on a $50 million development to bring a grocery store to Harding Boulevard.

"It's restore, our strength will come in restoring."