A few months ago my wife, child, and I took a little jaunt to New Orleans to visit some family that has lived down there for a long time. It is a trip we try to make every 18 months to two years, and this time it just happened to coincide with New Orleans Jazz Fest where Jon Batiste was closing down Friday night. It was a great time, I got to see almost a full set of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band in between getting snacks and drinks. By the time Jon Batiste was getting ready to go on, our almost four year old was cooked, and I took him back to the house. While I love Batiste, it was my wife’s bucket list item to see him play jazz fest. It was a trip that was hard at the start, but was incredibly enjoyable by the end.
Whenever we go somewhere, I know there will be downtime in the middle of the day while those two nap to run out and check out something I know others either won’t want to see, or is just too off the beaten path. For this trip, my main goal during this limited time, was to see the Whitney Plantation Museum. Plantations are not places I have ever had any interest in visiting, I do not care for Gone With the Wind, or the revisionist history that white southerners have spent so much time trying to cover up. The whole idea of a tour being focused around the big house makes my skin crawl. So when I read Clint Smith’s book, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, and his chapter on the Whitney Plantation, I knew I had to try and see it.
What sets the Whitney apart from other places like this, from their website, “Whitney Plantation is a non-profit museum dedicated to the history of slavery, situated on a historical sugar, indigo and rice plantation which operated from 1752-1975.” Their focus is strictly on the the lives of those enslaved, which was genuinely breathtaking, tear inducing, and uncomfortable which is perfect for every white person that walks those grounds. One thing that surprised me, aside from how stark the big house was (no decorations, no furniture, just there as a reminder which was 10/10), were the carved statues of children all around the grounds.
When you check into the tour, you are handed a lanyard that has a name and picture of one of these statues because they are real people with real stories about being enslaved. During FDR’s time in office, he pass the New Deal, a sweeping group of legislation from 1933-1939 that was designed to help lift this country out of the Great Depression. One of the projects that came from it was the Work Progress Administration (WPA), and journalists like Zora Neale Hurston, and others were sent out to record the accounts of those formerly enslaved. From those records, the Whitney pulled names, and on the back of the lanyard was written part of their story.
Henrietta Butler, around 80 years old when she gave her testimony, is who was on my lanyard. Her testimony is held on record at the Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Watson Memorial Library, in the Cammie G. Henry Research Center. The section of her story that is on my lanyard, which lives in my office, states:
I’se 80 some odd years ole, born at LaFourche. I was born in slavery. I’se not ashame’ to tel it either an’ knows somethin’ about it.
My damn ol’ missus was mean as hell; I know ever; night I had to wash dat ol’ woman’s foots an’ rub dem ‘fo I could ever go home to bed…they made my ma have babies all de time.
She was sellin’ the boys and keepin’ the gals.
If you are interested in reading some of the slave narratives from the WPA, you can access it online through the Library of Congress by clicking here. I cannot recommend visiting this place of history enough. Pick up Clint Smith’s book, read up on the Whitney, and friends, do your part to make sure nothing like this happens again. The 13th Amendment still allows slavery via the prison industrial complex, and those siblings who have been wrongfully or correctly imprisoned deserve the dignity they inherently have. Families are still being torn apart, I encourage you to contact your reps so that we do not find ourselves replaying this history. When we start to dehumanize our fellow image bearers, it becomes easier to think we are above “them” which we are not.
Grace and peace.
George of Sylvania 