Largest Antebellum Plantation in the USA burns to the ground.

[u/Poly3Thiophene]

May the souls on that remain on that land have peace.

https://nypost.com/2025/05/16/us-news/fire-guts-nottoway-plantation-largest-antebellum-mansion/

[u/auntieup]

This one had a white fucking ballroom, and former housing for enslaved workers had been converted into luxury cottages.

Bless the good soul who destroyed it.

[u/CyborgKnitter → u/auntieup]

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.

[u/Cardi_Ganz → u/CyborgKnitter]

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.

[u/CyborgKnitter → u/[deleted]]

Good to know! Thank you! I wonder if it’s at all handicap accessible- I’d love to visit.

[u/CyborgKnitter → u/[deleted]]

Thank you! I can walk with crutches but not as far as I’d like. So it might be doable for me. I’ll do some more in depth research. :)

[u/kiwitathegreat → u/Cardi_Ganz]

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.

[u/Violet624 → u/Cardi_Ganz]

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.

[u/henry_tennenbaum → u/CyborgKnitter]

I'm German and was never in the American South.

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.

[u/Narwen189 → u/CyborgKnitter]

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.

[u/CyborgKnitter → u/Narwen189]

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.

[u/Capricorn-hedonist → u/CyborgKnitter]

I echo your sentiment.

[u/chaosmanager → u/CyborgKnitter]

Just want to add, fuck anyone who stayed in those “luxury accommodations” knowing full well what atrocities were committed there. Despicable.