On Thursday, flames engulfed the Nottoway Plantation in Iberville Parish, Louisiana—one of many largest remaining antebellum mansions within the South. The fireplace raged for hours, finally decreasing the 165-year-old construction to ashes. And whereas native officers mourn what they describe as a “cornerstone of our tourism economic system,” many people—particularly these descended from the enslaved—felt one thing else completely: launch.
The ancestors are talking. Are you able to hear them?
To be clear, nobody celebrates destruction for destruction’s sake. However what burned that day wasn’t simply timber and brick. It was the rotted coronary heart of a story that has too typically romanticized the horrors of slavery and the brutal methods that upheld it.
Let’s be sincere: plantations are crime scenes. Interval.
Nottoway, with its opulent structure and manicured grounds, stood as a monument to wealth constructed on human struggling. Constructed in 1859 by John Hampden Randolph, the plantation was residence to 155 enslaved Black individuals. Their labor, their ache, their stolen lives—that is the untold story behind each chandelier and Corinthian column.
So once I see headlines describing the mansion as a “image of the grandeur and the deep complexities of our area’s previous,” I can’t assist however ask: for whom?
As a result of for descendants of the enslaved, grandeur just isn’t what involves thoughts once we hear “plantation.” We don’t see elegant ballrooms or bridal picture ops. We see sweat and scars. We hear the crack of whips. We really feel the burden of our ancestors’ chains.
That’s the true legacy of Nottoway—and of each plantation that also stands within the American South.
The fireplace that decreased Nottoway to rubble has been known as a tragedy by some, however it could be nearer to a reckoning. As crews battled flames that began within the attic and unfold all through the four-story construction, we had been reminded of what nonetheless smolders beneath the floor of this nation: a refusal to totally reckon with our previous. To mourn the lack of a plantation as if it had been a sacred relic is to disregard the reality of what it represents.
It’s vital to notice that Nottoway wasn’t only a historic residence. Lately, it had develop into a luxurious resort, a marriage venue, and a so-called “instructional website.” However let’s be actual—what sort of training sanitizes the blood-soaked floor it stands on? What number of of these vacation spot weddings ever acknowledged that vows had been being exchanged the place kids had been torn from their moms, the place individuals had been offered like livestock?
This isn’t historical past. It’s historic revisionism with a recent coat of white paint and a present store.
We hear loads about “preserving heritage” and “respecting historical past” on the subject of locations like Nottoway. However what’s being preserved? Whose heritage is being honored? As a result of if we’re not honoring the reminiscence of the enslaved—if we’re not telling their tales—then all we’re doing is glamorizing atrocity.
And let me be crystal clear: to romanticize the antebellum South is to be utterly absent of the ache it inflicted on hundreds of thousands of Black our bodies. It’s to decide on nostalgia over justice. It’s to drape horror in Spanish moss and name it tradition.
In a Fb publish, Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle wrote, “Whereas its early historical past is undeniably tied to a time of nice injustice, over the past a number of a long time it developed into a spot of reflection, training, and dialogue.”
Respectfully, reflection with out reality is denial. Dialogue with out accountability is noise.
We don’t want extra locations that “evolve.” We’d like locations that acknowledge. That identify the horror for what it was. That middle the voices of the descendants, not simply the {dollars} of the vacationers.
As a result of the reality is, Nottoway by no means belonged to Louisiana’s tourism economic system. It belonged to the individuals who constructed it with their naked fingers. The individuals who suffered there. The individuals who by no means received to depart.
So no, I don’t mourn the lack of a plantation. I mourn the lives that had been misplaced in bondage. I mourn the continued erasure of their humanity in service of southern gentility and mint julep mythology.
Because the ashes settle alongside the Mississippi River, allow us to not be so fast to rebuild what was by no means ours to start with. Allow us to sit on this second. Allow us to hearken to what the ancestors are saying.
As a result of typically, probably the most sacred act is letting one thing burn.
Burn, child, burn.
Not out of vengeance. However out of reality. Out of liberation. Out of the necessity to lastly, totally, bury the lie that plantations had been something lower than websites of American terror.
We hear you, ancestors. Loud and clear.
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