I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won’t believe the questions I got about slavery.

[KamaAina]

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847385/what-i-learned-from-leading-tours-about-slavery-at-a-plantation

Up until a few weeks ago, I worked at a historic site in the South that included an old house and a nearby plantation. My job was to lead tours and tell guests about the people who made plantations possible: the slaves.

The site I worked at most frequently had more than 100 enslaved workers associated with it— 27 people serving the household alone, outnumbering the home's three white residents by a factor of nine. Yet many guests who visited the house and took the tour reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owners.
"He said, "Listen, I just wanted to say that dragging all this slavery stuff up again is bringing down America""

The first time it happened, I had just finished a tour of the home. People were filing out of their seats, and one man stayed behind to talk to me. He said, "Listen, I just wanted to say that dragging all this slavery stuff up again is bringing down America."

I started to protest, but he interrupted me. "You didn't know. You're young. But America is the greatest country in the world, and these people out there, they'd do anything to make America less great." He was loud and confusing, and I was 22 years old and he seemed like a million feet tall.

[joeybee12]

1. Interesting...the one plantation I toured, the guide referred to them as "servants"

I found that offensive, that she wasn't allowed to, or wouldn't say slaves.

[bullwinkle428]

4. My ex toured one several years back (in Charleston, no less), and it was clear

that those leading the tours were in DEEP DEEP denial with regards to slavery, whether by choice or instruction. They referred to the period during the Civil War as "the unpleasantness", and the phrase "War of Northern Aggression" came up as well at some point.

[joeybee12]

5. Someone posted about how the denial and the revisionist history

is still taught down there...I'd agree with that.

[yardwork]

25. I had the same experience in Charleston.

The guide tried to tell us that there weren't very many slaves in Charleston.

I studied the trans-Atlantic slave trade in college. That guide was real put out with me by the end of the tour.

[joeybee12]

38. Good...

Denial seems to be a course they teach in school down there.

[dbackjon]

39. I know someone from Charleston

Old family, goes on and on about the War of Northern Aggression, and how well his family treated their "servants"


Refuses to call them what they were - slaves.

[csziggy]

12. It depends on the age of the plantations

Many of the ones around here (North Florida and South Georgia) were never cotton plantations and were established after the Civil War by Northerners moving down to take advantage of cheap land. A lot of them were - and still are - used as hunting preserves and as a sideline to produce lumber.

more later - our power just went out. bad storm/

[joeybee12]

13. I'm pretty sure the time frame was that it was in use before

the Civil War...this was in South Carolina.

[fishwax]

30. the guide at the one I went to called them "workers"

We were like

She might also have referred to them as servants once or twice. She certainly never said slave.

I found it offensive as well, but I guess not overly surprising. This was at Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana.

[trotsky]

2. Some of us would say what makes America great is our ability to rectify wrongs and expand rights.

And in that regard, remembering what slavery was and how we overcame it is very important.

[ananda]

6. Rights for women, minorities, and the poor are shrinking.

..

[Mariana]

15. No, no, what makes America great

is pretending the bad stuff didn't happen (and that no bad stuff is happening now), so it can all be forgotten. So plantation tour guides, teachers, historians, and everyone else should just shut up about all that slavery stuff. Anyone who talks about it is bringing America down.

[raccoon]

3. Great answer the author gave to a bully who asked if the slaves were "loyal:"

"I think most people would act ‘loyal' to a person who could shoot them for leaving," I said.

[me b zola]

16. + a gazillion

[uppityperson]

44. I was going to quote that also. Exactly. If you could be shot, or your family sold off, of course

you'd act like you needed to to survive together.

You or your kids or anyone could be sold, beaten, killed without repercussion. Even with a "good master".

[Joe Chi Minh]

50. ... or chop off one of their feet. But then that was for trying to escape.

Come to think of it, I don't believe I've ever come across the word, 'escape', used in reference to a slave. It was always 'running away'. It sound so much 'nicer'. (... or drapetomania for the likes of the Dr Mengeles) 'Escape' makes it sound as if they were 'running away' from criminals.

[underpants]

7. Great read. My wife and I went to Charleston on our honeymoon.

Now I'm not sure why but we did.

We went to Middleton Place just outside of town. Growing up in Virginia just down the road from Colonial Williamsburg and having gone to Mt. Vernon and Monticello many times I was used to tours such as this. My first thought on entering the house ( the family were signers of the Declaration and President of the First Continental Congress) was "Washington and Jefferson were poor hay farmers compared to these people". Middleton was a rice plantation.

Let me start with CW - Williamsburg. There was until very recently NO mention of slaves. People from NY NJ PA come down on group plans and that is probably seen as a downer to the experience. I never worked in CW but I worked all over the 'burg at hotels and restaurants. NO mention of slaves.

I haven't been to Mt Vernon in a long time so I don't know of any changes there.

I have been to Monticello a lot. Just an hour away people from out of town will often asked to go. The last time I went was probably 5 years ago. They were mentioning Sally Hemings but only a bit. The author of this article is correct - the mention of slavery is a relatively new element in these tours. In my group we had one such person who took exception, a person in my group. A Civil War buff. When the guide mentioned Sally and her relationship with Thomas we heard, "but that hasn't been proven!" Eyes rolled.
In Virginia basically slavery was not mentioned or there was a heavy air of torment and hard labor surrounding it.

At Middleton, it sounded partly like a management seminar and partly like a resort. The work was managed not the people. Each person had their quota and once it was met they could persue whatever interested them. Couples could work on their quota together so they could spent more time with each other. Pottery ( for their household or just for fun) gardening (food/fun also) or hunting.... at this point I had to say something - yeah I was THAT GUY in the group- "Are you saying that they could just go off into the woods with a rifle or was it a bow?" "It was a bow but yes they could" As in, why would they ever want to leave? I was done making a scene so I just locked eyes on the ground.

Different perspectives in the same industry.

[phylny]

26. I went to Mount Vernon several years ago, and the tour guide(s) talked about the slaves

quite a bit - how they had to get up so early to have breakfast ready for Washington, who was an early riser, how hard they had to work in his fields, how hard it was to do the laundry, work in his distillery, hauling animal and human feces to the "fertilizer" pit, slaughtering the animals, and keeping the grounds. They showed us the slaves quarters, and the guest slave quarters for visitors.

It was very enlightening, and I felt the somber mood amongst everyone there that day.

[underpants]

33. Okay I didn't know that

Thanks. Yes it really does put a damper on things that human bondage thing.

[oneshooter]

27. When was this? There have been mock "slave auction" several times.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/08/us/mock-auction-of-slaves-education-or-outrage.html

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-10-11/news/1994284122_1_colonial-williamsburg-foundation-slave-auction-re-enactment

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-10-11/news/1994284122_1_colonial-williamsburg-foundation-slave-auction-re-enactment


These are just a few articles about it.

[underpants]

34. Yes they do slave auctions

but for most of the tourism experience it is not discussed very often. Looking at the CW website I see no mention of it. I googled CW slavery and there is a posting from 1993 (I think) "To live like a slave" which includes a link to Learn more about African-American colonial life -- that link does contain info about slavery but it's 3 layers down IF you google search it.

Maybe they are discussing it now but that has been a very slow change.

[drm604]

47. Wow. How could they treat people like that? I'll never understand it.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

8. If you, or anyone reading this thread :)

ever gets to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, they can get up close narratives of what it was like for slaves by visiting the two buildings slaves lived in that were removed from a plantation and relocated here. The person on duty will talk at length about slavery and how the slaves on that particular plantation (somewhere near Savannah GA) were treated.
Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum is likely the cultural high point for the Detroit area.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. Other cultural high points around Detroit ...

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Opera House are a few others.

But, yes, Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum are interesting and informative.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

11. I agree, and didn't intentionally leave them out

it's just that most people (travelers) will find Greenfield Village easier to get to and, it's not IN Detroit. That in and of itself, scares many people.......

[alfredo]

51. Don't miss the Diego Rivera mural.

[mnhtnbb]

10. We were just in Charleston in May for a week for their Spoleto Festival.

They had a garden tour one Saturday and we went to see some of the gardens
of houses in the historic Battery section of old Charleston. My husband kept asking
one of the docent type people who was available to answer questions--not really give
a tour--what a particular building had been used for that looked to be like it could have
been a carriage house, except it was fairly close to the main house. Yup, he eventually got her
to admit it was slave quarters. Of course they wouldn't keep horses that close to the house!

[Uncle Joe]

14. That's a good read.

Thanks for the thread, KamaAina.

[me b zola]

17. We must not talk about the things that make people of privilege uncomfortable

...because if we did, then things would change.

[HFRN]

18. if one doesnt like hearing about slavery

perhaps one should avoid touring plantations

that's what i would have said to him

[markpkessinger]

22. At some of them, it is the guides who don't like to talk about it!

See my post downthread.

[Jamastiene]

19. Down here, to hear a lot of locals tell it,

slaves just loved it. They fought for the Confederacy. They loved the people who owned them. They stayed on after the Civil War because they wanted to be close to the people who owned them.

Those are the kinds of things people constantly tell me where I live. That slavery was slavery is heavily denied in most areas of the Carolinas. I can't speak for the rest of the south, but in the Carolinas, slavery was anything but slavery. It was something black folk just loooved doing. That's what local "historians" try telling anyone who will listen. It is sickening.

It makes any thinking person nauseated to hear them talk like they do.

[raccoon]

32. I've heard some like that--they seem to think the white Americans did the blacks a favor to bring

them over here and enslave them.

I can't understand such convoluted thinking.

[Jamastiene]

46. I don't understand their thinking either.

I have always felt like I was in some strange episode of The Twilight Zone, because so many people around me think exactly that way. It is horrendous.

[GeoWilliam750]

42. It is at least jarring and more likely supremely painful

To actually understand the truly horrid atrocities that "we" have visited on others, many feel that they will be diminished. It is part of the thinking that, it is easier to forgive somebody for being wrong than it is to forgive them for being right.

For those that doubt the vileness of the system, they should go down into the Southern courthouses, and read through the property transactions involving slaves - living human beings, and often kin - it is nauseating.

Another interesting thing to do is to look through the manumission records in the old courthouses. What particularly turns my stomach is the number of slaves that were freed at around the age of 40 - past which they were not expected to long live. Rather than look after the slaves in their old age, the owners often freed them when they were no longer likely to be able to produce more than they ate, turned them out of their home, and forced them to go find another place to live out there few last years.

Anyone who says that slavery was other than an atrocity is either staggeringly ignorant or sick to the core of his soul.

[Jamastiene]

45. Most definitely.

"Anyone who says that slavery was other than an atrocity is either staggeringly ignorant or sick to the core of his soul."

Most definitely.

[kwassa]

20. "The most slaves in Louisiana"

Shadows-On-The-Teche, New Iberia, Louisiana. My girlfriend and I were touring as we were looking for things to see on a cross-country trip. I asked the tour guide what the plantation was known for. The plantation house was in a town, the actual plantation lands out in the country. The guide uncomfortably answered that this plantation had more slaves than any other in Louisiana.

The northern version was my wife and I wandering around historic Frederick, Maryland, and spotting a house tour. It turned out to be a home that had been owned by Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, before and during the Civil War. He was responsible for the most reviled Supreme Court decision of all time, the Dred Scott decision. The tour guide was quite reticent telling Taney's story to me and my African-American wife.

[KamaAina]

31. I've been there

What struck me was, of all things, a six-bladed chopper in an asterisk shape. I wanted to copy it and launch an "Americana" cookware series.

[markpkessinger]

21. I took a bus tour once from New Orleans of a number of plantation homes. . .

. . . I wish I could remember all their names, but this was in the early '90s. The only whose name I specifically remember was the famous Oak Alley. But it was interesting, from one plantation to the next, to see how the guides dealt with the subject of slave life. There was one (perhaps it was the one you worked at!), where they did a superb job of talking about the lives of slaves, as well as the wealthy residents, of that particular plantation. And the end, a friend and I commended the guide for being the first guide we had encountered on our tour that had provided such rich detail concerning slave life at that plantation. She then asked, "Have you been to Oak Alley yet?" We hadn't, but it was the next stop on the tour for us. "Well," she said, "I think you'll find the guides there much less willing to talk about it. But they'll talk your ear off about the 'gracious southern living' at Oak Alley." She proved to be correct. My friend and I even tried to draw the guide at Oak Alley out on the subject of slave life, but she was clearly uncomfortable talking about it, and was visibly annoyed when we continued to bring the subject up!

And I gotta say, of the four or five plantation homes we saw that day, Oak Alley (which we had seen featured in movies and which we were especially looking forward to), turned out to be the least interesting, both in terms of the presentation offered by the guides, and in terms of the historic restoration of the house itself.

[kiva]

23. Sounds like what Lizzie Mae had to say.

[blackspade]

36. Love these.

[LuvNewcastle]

24. I don't know where the people in that

tour were from, but that is a testament to how deceived people can be when they want hard enough to believe something else. My grandparents would have thought those people were fools, and they would have been right.

All of my grandparents grew up on farms, and they all worked hard. Some of them grew cotton, and they had to help pick the cotton as well as the other crops. From the way they described it to me, picking cotton was hell.

First, you were on your knees the whole time. Second, if you aren't familiar with cotton plants, the boll that you're picking comes from a thorny growth that is always sticking your fingers as you tear out the boll. You also have to deal with bugs and snakes out in the fields as you're picking, and you have to drag that heavy sack behind you while you go from row to row. I'm sure I'm leaving something out, but finally, you're working in 95 degree heat with 90 percent humidity, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Picking cotton, in other words, was just about the worst work you can imagine, and they would never have thought the slaves had it easy. These people today are fed this RW revisionist history and Fox News so much that they're out of their minds. I could never be one of those tour guides. The urge to smack people upside the head would overtake me.

[GeoWilliam750]

43. Rice

A lot of early slaves were brought to work in the rice fields in the South because the landowners could not get white people to do the work. One of the reasons for the shortage of white workers was that they had a tendency to die of malaria, to which many of the African born slaves had some immunity.

[Jerry442]

28. I grew up in the countryside in Missouri...

...I knew a lot of farmers that raised beef cattle. Some were model farmers whose animals were well-cared for and thrived. Others were losers who barely kept their animals alive (or not).

But you know what? Ultimately all the cows ended up killed, cut into pieces, and eaten.

Slavery can either be practiced horribly badly...or worse than that.

[Snobblevitch]

29. Many years ago, my mother went on a plantation tour

and there was a lady also on the tour who said something like "I can almost hear them singing as they worked" in reference to the slaves. She then said that it must have been a good life for them because they worked and had a place to live and food to eat. Never in my life did I ever hear my mother say the big effenheimer. When my aunt told us the story about the tour and what that lady said, she told us that my mother told that lady "you are out of your fucking mind." My brothers and I were teenagers at the time, but we just said to her, "way to go mom!"

[blackspade]

35. People are so stupid.

How can you tour a slave plantation without talking about the slaves?

[zentrum]

37. Thanks for writing

……about this. The denial of the truth of slavery and the cause of the civil war in the south is so lethal. Apart from what it's cost in Black lives, it's effected every progressive piece of policy. Racism and its denial is all tangled in with being against everything that seems that it's from the north, or from Obama, or from the government. Without racism and just as bad—its denial—I'm sure we'd have universal health care, universal college education, an expanded social security, and a higher minimum wage.

Racism and its denial has made the country ignorant and backward…..and has cost generations of Black lives and possibilities. I blame the north for appeasing it based on its own racism. The appeasement is baked into the structure of the Constitution by Jefferson and we've never fixed it.

[maindawg]

40. This is just one reason

I cannot tolerate teabillies any longer. There are certain people who live in this bubble where its still ok to hold these antiquated views. There are even many who feel its their duty to express these anti social opinions in an effort to encourage like minded people to step up for that non sense. Thats why you cannot attend your family reunions or you other family gatherings anymorre. There is always some jerk who has to cast about for some kind of duel so they can run out the line of BS they learned from flush and Beck. Vomit. There is no civility left anymore. Only solace.

[proud patriot]

41. really interesting article

I have found similar misconceptions when debating the Confederate Flag in recent weeks

[1Greensix]

48. It Used to be a great country

The truth is that some people's relatives were the most despicable human beings imaginable, and/or they were total racists willing to kill fellow human beings to allow others to possess human beings as slaves. Many of the rest of our relatives Fought the confederacy to destroy slavery, uphold human dignity and end racist policies in the south. WE proudly fly the American Flag. Not the enemy confederate flag. There is nothing romantic about southern plantations. They should all have been burned to the ground in 1865 at the end of the war. They were the Gates of Hell for millions of slaves, and owned by racist slavers and their rotten offspring.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

49. There's this fear amongst many whites that admiting it happened will "stir em up"....

Or worse, they'll expect to get reparations.

[ellie]

52. Thanks for posting this!

It was interesting read.

[akbacchus_BC]

53. Just curious, did you know the history of the plantation or were you an employee?

For example, I lived in Barbados for 12 years and when you visit a plantation, especially when it is a tourist attraction, the person who is taking you on a tour knows the history of the plantation, who were the original owners and why the left! Are those facts available to you?

[KamaAina]

54. Someone else wrote the article in the first person.

I seem to be getting a lot of that lately.