Whitney Plantation is not a Gone With Wind type tour of a romantic plantation in all its doubiouse glory.  Although it does have a plantation house, the house is mostly empty and bit shabby.  It is a poignant memorial to the slaves that worked, lived, and died here and indeed to all slaves —especially children — in Louisiana.

We may have lost half of our readers with this sad opening; it’s not a fun place, nor is it there to display its beauty.  You can see below that the plantation house — even if it saw better days — was not the fanciest.

Since we were travelling in the south, we wanted to see a plantation.  As Canadians we didn’t really think about the angle of the story, we just thought it would be cool/interesting/beautiful to visit a plantation.  When we saw the brochure for the Whitney Plantation with its focus on slaves’ lives, it became very clear to us that if we visit one plantation, this should be the one.  Perhaps naively, we thought all plantations did this type of interpretation.

The guide plays on your heart strings with great passion.  They are there to inform, but also to invoke the misery, the indignity done to human beings, and the illusion of supremacy by others. It’s not the kind of tour full of light-hearted jokes and anecdotes you may have taken in New Orleans.  They go straight to the point: slavery sucked. Human beings did this to other human beings.  It should not happen again.

There is a museum on the ground with a good overview of the history of slavery, but the children are the focus of this museum.  Your admission ticket is lanyard with a tag featuring the story of a child.  They are taken from interviews that were conducted under the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s with former slaves and their narratives in their own words.  What a foresight!

These were ‘our’ children and we carried them with us throughout the tour.

their stories are on the back of the tag .  We got to take them with us by the end of our tour.

The children are incorporated skillfully into the tour.  There are statues of the children on porches

in the church

we identified ‘our’ children.  How powerful is this experience to school children learning about slavery?

As we continued out tour we learned about their living conditions

the production of sugar cane in the ‘sugar train’

skills brought from Africa and skilled acquired in America

We had a glimpse of the Whitney plantation house from the jail cells

As we walked with our guide through the grounds, she shared history and stories (she is a history teacher during the week).  She emphasized that this place is not just a teaching site, but also a memorial to those who perished and suffered on these grounds and on other plantations.

there are several memorials on the grounds

but the statue at the end of the tour is brilliant in driving home the message.

Returning the chains.

So you have a choice.  You can pretend to be Scarlett for a day, or you can wear the chains for an hour.  One of these choices may make you a better person.

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