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infrogmation) wrote2025-05-17 10:38 am
infrogmation) wrote2025-05-17 10:38 am
Plantations, slavery, Louisiana & history - some musings
Basic US history reminder: Keep in mind that slavery in the US slave states was not something just on plantations. Human enslavement was central to the economic & political system.
Pretty much every structure in the US South from European Colonial times through the US Civil War was built with slave labor.
Also, representing enslaved people as only furnishing "unskilled" labor is a deliberate and pernicious fiction to minimize the achievements and importance of People of Color. Skilled craftspeople and artisans labored as enslaved "property".
Every pre-1860s church, bank, town hall, town house, etc in the US South was as much a product of slavery as a plantation house.
When I say pretty much everything, it goes down to granular level.
Free family of Color or poor whites building their modest house by themselves with help from family and friends? Lumber would come from mills using slave labor. Bricks from brickyards using slave labor. Nails from ironworks using slave labor.
Slavery was a ubiquitous force in the whole of society.
This came to mind with news that Nottoway Plantation House, which had been the largest surviving example, burned down, and seeing some people on social media celebrating as if it were set fire by the enslaved people with the enslavers inside... It's 160 some years late for that.
I am vehemently against any glorification of the "lost cause" enslaver society, but see no victory in the old building's destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation
IMO it should have been a monument to those enslaved there - including those who despite their suffering produced art and architecture, and illustrating the enslavers' decadent barbarity under a thin unconvincing veneer of culture.
I'm aware of only 3 Louisiana plantations made visitor attractions that make the centrality of brutal enslavement a key part of the story - Laura, Whitney, and formerly the 1811 Kid Ory House (which unfortunately closed for good during the pandemic).
M.S. Bellows, Jr. commented: "It was still encouraging white people to celebrate a culture that could not have existed without enslavement. It was having that effect in the present. It needed to burn."
I have to say I do see that as a valid perspective.
The issue is not about the long dead, it is about the living who are marketing an historic site of horror torture and death as being something cool and romantic.
Pretty much every structure in the US South from European Colonial times through the US Civil War was built with slave labor.
Also, representing enslaved people as only furnishing "unskilled" labor is a deliberate and pernicious fiction to minimize the achievements and importance of People of Color. Skilled craftspeople and artisans labored as enslaved "property".
Every pre-1860s church, bank, town hall, town house, etc in the US South was as much a product of slavery as a plantation house.
When I say pretty much everything, it goes down to granular level.
Free family of Color or poor whites building their modest house by themselves with help from family and friends? Lumber would come from mills using slave labor. Bricks from brickyards using slave labor. Nails from ironworks using slave labor.
Slavery was a ubiquitous force in the whole of society.
This came to mind with news that Nottoway Plantation House, which had been the largest surviving example, burned down, and seeing some people on social media celebrating as if it were set fire by the enslaved people with the enslavers inside... It's 160 some years late for that.
I am vehemently against any glorification of the "lost cause" enslaver society, but see no victory in the old building's destruction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation
IMO it should have been a monument to those enslaved there - including those who despite their suffering produced art and architecture, and illustrating the enslavers' decadent barbarity under a thin unconvincing veneer of culture.
I'm aware of only 3 Louisiana plantations made visitor attractions that make the centrality of brutal enslavement a key part of the story - Laura, Whitney, and formerly the 1811 Kid Ory House (which unfortunately closed for good during the pandemic).
M.S. Bellows, Jr. commented: "It was still encouraging white people to celebrate a culture that could not have existed without enslavement. It was having that effect in the present. It needed to burn."
I have to say I do see that as a valid perspective.
The issue is not about the long dead, it is about the living who are marketing an historic site of horror torture and death as being something cool and romantic.
Plantations, slavery, Louisiana & history - some books
well done video commentary