The Whitney Plantation: A Humbling Learning Experience

According to our Caucasian Airbnb hosts, the Whitney Plantation is nothing more than a tourist trap focused solely on guilt and making money. The audacity (or rather, privilege)! Naturally, after that unsolicited offering I became even more intrigued with visiting this particular plantation. Even more so than when I saw the episode on Real Housewives of Potomac where Gizelle Bryant shared about being able to trace her lineage back to St. John the Baptist Parish town where her enslaved ancestors lived and worked.

With the help of my two friends, the itinerary was set and visiting the Whitney Plantation in New Orleans during my 40th birthday trip made the list. We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams and it was important for us to pay our respects by learning more about how they lived and what they endured for US. Considering that the Whitney Plantation is the only plantation in New Orleans and America that focuses on slavery, I was shocked to learn that it first opened its doors to the public in 2014. There was no question about if we would make it there or not.

Our private van arrived promptly at 8am to transport my friends and I on the hour-long drive to the Whitney Plantation. Thus far the trip to NOLA, as we enjoy calling New Orleans, had been going EXTRAordinarily well, and our bus tour was no different. Without skipping a beat, our driver provided an in depth tour of our surroundings as we sat anxiously awaiting our arrival on the plantation. We did made a quick stop for beignets and tea to a small family-owned cafe, Fee-Fo-Lay, in Wallace, LA.

Before long, we arrived. It was time to experience life of my enslaved ancestors mainly from the perspective of the children who lived and worked on the plantation. The history of the plantation is dated back to the 1750s when it was built and owned by a German Family who used it as an indigo (a natural dye) plantation. In the early 1800s the plantation’s purpose shifted from the business of indigo to sugar.

If you’re hoping to visit a plantation to gawk over a well-preserved antebellum mansion, you will be disappointed by the Whitney whose aim is to provide a more honest depiction of plantation life through the enslaved individual’s perspective. During the initial group huddle, we all learned not to use the term “slave” as we were all handed lanyards that had a picture on one side along with an excerpt of an interview on the other. Our extremely knowledgeable and passionate tour guide shared that the picture on the front is of an enslaved person who gained their freedom. It was also during this time that we were asked to use the term slave individuals or slave person(s) to maintain some sort of dignity for the former inhabitants of this plantation.

The formal tour began inside the Antioch Baptist Church which is not an original structure to the plantation. The church was donated to the Whitney in 1999 after a new structure had been built in the original location on the east bank of the Mississippi River in St. James Parish. Inside, we watched a short film that shared the heinous history and informed us that the plantation serves to honor the children who were enslaved there.

The Whitney Plantation provides structures that would have been found on the plantation during the time of operation as well as structures that were brought onto the property afterwards in an effort to preserve their history. The granite Wall of Honor serves as a strong visual and necessary memorial for the over 350 enslaved persons who lived and worked on the plantation. It was sad and painful to hear the recounts of life for the enslaved individuals on the plantation.

Among our group of women we felt the pain of the Field of Angels Memorial which is dedicated to the over 2,000 enslaved children who died throughout the Parish between the 1820s - 1860s. Hearing the vile circumstances and conditions that innocent children were exposed to is information that I am still processing.

The second building we toured was the slave quarters/cabin. The first thing that you notice is the size: it is tiny. The cabins on this plantation are actual cabins from neighboring plantations because the ones from the Whitney were torn down and removed from the property.

Not only were the cabins small, but multiple individuals lived inside. They were expected to work tirelessly to make sugar from sugar canes that grew on the property. As we continued to tour the plantation our tour guide provided details that brought about so many emotions. One word that stuck out to me was her use of the word “wholesale” in the same sentence with selling people. Likewise, we were reminded that slavery was a business which left little to no reason for enslaved people to be treated with any dignity since the only focus was on productivity by any means necessary. Hearing this, along with the visuals on the property, hurt to the core. The conditions were designed for owners to have complete control. In fact, we were told that there were no trees on the original plantation because the masters/owners needed to be in a position to see the entire plantation at all times. With this mindset, it’s of no surprise that the metal jail was located adjacent to the slave quarters.

An interesting point made by our guide is that the kitchen was one of the most important parts of the plantation because there the ability for workers to compromise their masters was a viable threat.

The Big House was thought of as a headquarters for the day to day business operations. Most plantation owners had a second home in the city that was much more opulent than the one located on the plantation made of wood (Cyprus).

Learning history from the enslaved person’s perspective was powerful. The overarching question that the Whitney seeks to answer is: “What does it feel like to be someone else’s property?” We will never truly know, but I am grateful for the preservation of this plantation.