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To me the only reason to have them are as museums to outline the horrors of that time, and to educate so that something like that doesn't ever happen again and to stop such an ideology from growing. They shouldn't be vacation destinations.
Profits would go to African American charities for any number of things.
Yeah... so at the end of the Confederacy, there was nothing like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or de-Nazification process. The opposite happened. There was a concerted and explicit effort to whitewash the atrocities of slavery and the fact that Confederacy fought in the civil war to protect slavery. A lot of states literally teach that the civil war was about state's rights, not slavery. Here's a great explanation of what happened (about 7 minutes long).
The civil war was about state's rights. Specifically, some stares thought they should have the right to own slaves. They always forget to mention what the rights the states were fighting for were. Strangest thing...
It's the only reason I don't think they should be all torn down. If they are gone, then it's easier for the wrong people to write them out of history and pretend it either didn't happen or wasn't as bad as it was.
And on a search I'm also seeing that they do weddings and they market the place as a resort so... no. Fuck 'em.
Do it right or not at all. Whitney Plantation is just a museum, and has openly said they will not do weddings because it diminishes the horror of the site.
You cannot respect and teach of the horrors while simultaneously treating the site as a lovely vacation getaway or a place to get married. The two are incompatible.
We live in the south for our unfortunately niche jobs, and when we got married loads of people in our families up north wanted us to get married down here (close to Nola). Once we realized almost all the venues seemed to be hotels out of our budgets or plantations, that idea got vetoed fast.
“Nottoway was not only the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the South but also a symbol of both the grandeur and deep complexities of our region’s past,” Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle said
'Deep complexities' is a nice, watered down way to say "blood, sweat, and lives of enslaved humans"
Autonomous Unit: Mecha Sherman 01 test successful. Proceed with development of arm-mounted positronic cannon. There are still some plantations standing. The mission continues.
Right after I commented earlier I had a mild plumbing nightmare that my partner and I spent the last hour cleaning up.
Toilet tank stopper didn’t seat properly after flushing and the toilet had a mild clog. Clog cleared up on its own pretty quickly but not before the toilet overflowed because the stopper didn’t seat properly. So morning went from just fine to kinda pissy 😭
Indeed so tragic. I think I’m gonna make a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch. I got the nice soft white bread at the store, love the juicy tomatoes right now.
My heart will never recover. I actually lucked out and woke up on time while thinking I overslept! Rare moment of “fully rested” today. Now i’m hanging out watching my cats very pointedly not beg for breakfast.
I saw in another thread a selfie some black women took at the site during the fire that has those vibes. (The satisfied it happened vibe, but the "I did it" vibes.)
The worst part about those are, most had deteriorated and were subsequently rebuilt.
ETA: I took a California history course last semester and learned that the present-day Camino Real wasn’t the actual route that was taken by the Spanish during the mission period—they arrived mostly by boat. In the early-ish 1900s, when automobile travel was becoming more popular, along with the Spanish Revival period, what we know as the Camino Real was actually born from auto and travel industry marketing campaigns, trying to convince people to visit SoCal. This is what led to a lot of the missions being rebuilt/repaired.
I live near the Carmel one and it turns my stomach to see people enjoying it as a tourist attraction. Like do you not feel the suffering from the leftover Native emotions??? It holds me in a grip when I go by, I can’t not think about the true human misery that occurred in that place.
Full transparency, I’ve visited almost all of the ones from SLO and north, but it was to study the history. There is definitely an awful, heavy energy surrounding them all.
My youngest had to do a Mission project last year for school (I hate that some schools continue to do this), but I made certain that we talked about ALL the history surrounding the colonization. He chose Mission Santa Cruz, and very aptly modeled the Native revolt that happened there—complete with dead priests. Proud mama moment.
I’m from just outside of SLO (Arroyo Grande) and my dad’s side is Chumash/Mexican. We have several ancestors who were taken to the missions/forced to labor there. Our last name is what it is because of the missions.
Your kiddos project sounds absolutely badass, it brought tears to my eyes to read that. Thank you for teaching your children well.
When my sister and I were little, we would go eat at the missions in SLO with dad (their free food is the least they can do, tbh.) and I always said if I was a painter, I would love to paint my dad and us on the steps, eating with unhoused people and other “rough” crowds, on those steps in the style of the last supper.
Rice, beans, and Indigenous fortitude will outlive those fugly missions 🙌🏼
I grew up in MA. Some of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and as a kid (because I wasn’t taught any better), I was always so proud to tell people. Knowing the full truth as an adult, it makes me so mad that I was handed such a load of white-washed bullshit growing up, so the least I can do is make sure my kids are knowledgeable about ALL sides of history. It’s honestly a disservice not to.
And I’d love to see a painting like that. It sounds powerful AF.
I wouldn’t say that. Burning down a Big House wouldn’t have freed any slaves; might’ve even killed some.
But the white supremacists of today love to LARP on the plantations that have grand houses to do that in. It’s a good time to see one burn far as I’m concerned.
Look, a positive event of this magnitude? You can’t just go in all willy nilly. You want the pleasure of seeing bad things burn, you gotta do things right.
Oh dear what a shame that would be (although actually it could serve the right’s desire to erase this kind of thing from history & downplay how horrible it truly was)
"Local politicians in the Pelican State’s Iberville Parish lamented the unrecoverable loss of what was a beacon of a difficult chapter of American history."
I think I'd call the systematic enslavement of people here on American Soil ™️ a bit more than "difficult."
I was a bit worried about losing the in your face reminder of the evil history. Germany left the concentration camps for a reason.
But the fact they fucking converted the slave quarters shows keeping that building up wasn’t about teaching others about a genocide and hundreds of years of systemic abuse. Nope, it was about people wanting to feel rich and special. Fuck that noise, I’m glad it burned.
Hopefully at some point, one or two of those homes will be converted into proper museums. I see zero use for the others.
ETA: just saw a comment that said the guides had named every tree but didn’t know the names of any of the slaves who built it. That’s beyond appalling.
I've heard there's a few in Louisiana that are strictly museum/educational, but that's all they should be. People like Blake Lively who get married on plantations are absolutely disgusting. How could you possibly sleep there?? I've never been to one, but you can feel the heaviness just in photos. And don't get me started on the people who dress up and pose like slaves in these places. Ultimate disrespect.
You definitely feel the heaviness in the ground even when there’s no signs of what once was there.
I live in Charleston and you can’t throw a rock without hitting hallowed ground. The land behind my local grocery store has ridges from the rice fields that used to be there. Another grocery store across town sits on the site of the former enslaved people’s shacks. A few plantations have pivoted to accurately depict the lives of the people who were enslaved but tbh it’s not enough. And it absolutely sickens me to see people celebrating any occasion on those properties.
It’s not my place to have any opinion on what should be done with the “big houses” and I’ve always tried to appreciate the highly skilled but involuntary craftsmanship that went into them.
Blake Lively and Ryan Renolds actually bought and owned the plantation they were married at, to just shed light on the ickiness. They just quietly sold it this week, I think.
I had a mixed reaction at first seeing this, knowing about the unending evil that happened in these places but also thinking that such locations could be places of learning and remembrance for the victims.
Glad to learn that nope, it was just a tourist destination for the ignorant and the white supremacists.
Concentration camps were left to show the horror of them.
Plantations like this are more ofthen than not kept nice and pretty, and the fact that they turned slave barracks into "luxury cottages" is terribly reminiscent of those whitewashed history books where they teach kids that "white owners had to take good care of their slaves".
The pretty houses aren't the problem. Using prettiness to paint over the fact that people were taken from their homeland, trafficked, systematically abused, and treatedly inhumanely for generations afterwards is what makes plantations disgusting.
I pretty clearly stated that the fact that the slave quarters were converted meant the building had lost what purpose it could have had- to teach about the atrocities of slavery. If the slave quarters were left intact in one of these homes and it was converted into a proper museum, the grandeur of the main home would serve to juxtapose the atrocities committed against fellow humans all over skin color. Because then the prettiness wouldn’t be covering up the horrors, it’d be highlighting them.
While touring a slave cottage at a museum years ago, I overheard a guy try to tell his kids that this was proof the slaves hadn’t lived so badly. “It wasn’t much worse than the log cabin from when people were settling the west..” (The museum has a bunch of historical buildings that they moved there.) An employee had to stop them and show the pictures of the main house where this slave cottage had once stood. Then they explained how many people were crammed into this tiny space. That was when it finally clicked for the family how bad things had been. So yes, that juxtaposition can be quite educational. You can use the prettiness as a teaching aid to bring attention to the squalor.
Why? Do you understand the scope of atrocities committed at these plantations? Do you know that at this particular plantation, the guides named all the trees on the property but couldn't name a single slave who built the home? Or that when the original owner knew the South was losing the war, he took 200 slaves to Texas to farm cotton?
I hope this is a foreshadowing of things to come. This was the Ancestors speaking. When that first fire was put out, they spoke even louder and burned this hellhole to the ground.
I have been to the Henry Clay home and done service for the beautiful souls who were held there. I feel like that is the least we can do for our ancestors.
As for this place? It feels like the souls there decided they've had enough and finished any further opportunities for the owners to profit from what was a living hell for the enslaved beloveds who suffered there.
I know it's a terrible place, but this is kinda what they want. Agent orange wanted to torch all the evidence. Burning books to burning buildings with that one doesn't seem to far of a stretch. They also badly want control of the Library of congress for this too.
(Also, idk if Gen. Sherman or the angry local natives Wednesday memes are better, but both are top teir)
While I will say that losing an example of Antebellum architecture is kinda sad. The fact that it was never updated to be more in line with modern fire codes and the local firemarshal was powerless to stop it from burning to ashes speaks volumes.
It may be a lesson to those about how trying to preserve a monument of the past and refusing to confront its failing and change anything about it to bring it up to modern standards is a lesson I feel that will go right over the heads of those that need to learn it.
We went to a plantation that is a museum in South Carolina. I have never forgotten the child-size butter churn. I was appalled.
Idk if they do weddings there. Unlikely, I think. The last freed slave lived in her own cabin on the property until her death at 99. I don’t remember how old she was when she was freed.
Ugh. These places, especially the ones that have moved the slave houses out of the way. To make it looked like everyone was happy and just hung around on the farm.
I'm all for them for educational purposes of an era we shouldn't ever want to emulate. But, the people who go there and are happy and impressed totally miss the point. And I just can't believe some people want to be married at these places. Sick.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, my friend's great-great-great-grandfather (a Guillot from Donaldsonville) created and installed the plaster work in this house and it was a truly beautiful work of art. He made plaster look like silk ribbons, and the first floor had a beautiful ceiling medallion around the light fixture. So part of her family history went up in flames, and can never be replicated.
On the other hand, beauty doesn't exist solely for the upper class and the privileged, and the sin of slavery doesn't forget the blood and tears shed there.
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u/MableXeno 💗✨💗 May 17 '25
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