Slavery

[locks]

The recent posts about slavery in our nation have been interesting but seem to be more about blame, guilt, punishment, and reparations. Or a defense of those who were not involved in the slave trade but benefited from it. Not so much about how slavery came to be through the centuries in almost every nation and how most of what we know and what we teach our children was handed down to us by slave owners and the many political leaders, royalty, Popes, and companies who were deeply involved in the huge worldwide slave trade.

A week ago I visited the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, thirty miles north of New Orleans, the first plantation restored to tell the stories of the slaves themselves. It opened this year to the public after 262 years and is still in the restoration process. Ten years ago John Cummings, a white southern Democrat lawyer, who had visited the many beautiful plantations in Louisiana felt strongly that none of them told the true story of life on the plantations. The lovely big houses were reconstructed but the slave quarters were almost completely destroyed; the millions of tourists heard hardly a word about the lives of the men, women and children who worked and suffered until they died to farm tons of cotton and sugar cane for wealthy companies to send around the world. (Hundreds of plantations built by slaves of German immigrants thrived on the Great River Road; only about 60 remain and about 30 are open to the public.)

Whitney was going to be torn down for development when Cummings bought all 1700 acres, hired some of our best historians of African-American life and spent millions to research and to restore Whitney so that it would truly represent what it was like to be a slave on these large "farms". Many slave cabins have been restored and the iron jail where slaves were shackled if they tried to escape. Inspired by the Vietnam War Memorial large polished panels are etched with the names of every one of the 365 slaves who lived at Whitney, where they came from, what happened to their families, and includes many quotes and paintings from the Library of Congress. In time 400,000 Louisiana slave names will be on the huge panels. The Field of Angels is a memorial with the names of 2,200 babies who died before the age of 3.

In the entry building the long and terrible worldwide history of slavery is documented. Did you know that Brazil imported more slaves than any other country? Did you know that the Pope approved Portugal to hold slaves "in perpetuity"? Did you know that most of the slaves coming from the Caribbean were sold in the market of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans? Did you know that the largest slave revolt in US history (never mentioned in our history books) started near the Whitney, almost succeeded in overthrowing New Orleans before the US army captured the slaves, killed most of them and executed the 45 left after a "trial"? Their heads were put on poles up and down the Mississippi River as a warning to any slaves planning to revolt.

It is not much easier to visit the Whitney Plantation than Dachau but it seems to me that we can only be "real Americans" when we stop covering up the parts of history we are ashamed of and believing patriotism is thinking we are an "exceptional" nation. Our children, black, white, Native American will learn that we all can be proud of our country when we acknowledge our history and mean it when we say "never again."

[appalachiablue]

1. Thanks for this very important discussion, well said. John Cummings deserves much appreciation

for the work he's done to educate us about the workers who built America. I've seen the River Road plantations in Louisiana and my father liberated Dachau.

[gladium et scutum]

2. More of the Slaves

stories are being told. In a recent visit to Jefferson's estate at Monticello, they curators now have a program and walking tour detailing the lives of the slaves that worked and lived there. Included was a portions regarding Sally Hemmings her relationship with Jefferson. The stories of the slaves at Monticello comes from the very detailed records that Jefferson kept on every facet of the affairs on the estate. In addition, work is in progress to rebuild the slave quarters that existed near the main house.

[appalachiablue]

6. In the 1980s and 1990s some historic properties and plantations began incorporating the story of

slave life through interpretive programs and exhibits, the Smithsonian Institution, Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon and Arlington House in VA and DC. The Hemmings family of Monticello is one example of the complex Colonial era relationships between master and slave, concubinage and descendants. Much material exists online about the hundreds of Hemmings-Jefferson descendants.
It's known that at least three generations of Hemmings women were kept as slave mistresses by their owners. Bette, Sally's mother was the concubine of John Wayles, Jefferson's father in law. Bette Hemmings mother, and Sally's grandmother, was an African slave woman who was owned by English ship Captain John Hemmings. While in France, TJ, a widower, began an affair with Sally who was 14 and he was 46. Their relationship lasted several decades.

Other noted American family members of mixed race are the Grimkes of South Carolina. Sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke moved North in the 1850s and became abolitionists. After the Civil War they helped two young mixed race nephews, Francis and Archibald Grimke, sons of their brother who attended Harvard College and Princeton Theological Seminary and became noted civic leaders in Philadelphia and Washington DC.

The Syphax family is thought to be related the Custis family of Arlington House. George Washington Parke Custis was the grandson of Martha and George Washington through Martha's first marriage to wealthy Tidewater planter Daniel Parke Custis. Raised at Mount Vernon, Washy Custis built his home Arlington House on the Potomac River across from the new City of Washington around 1800. Documents exist of his gift of land to Maria Syphax, a young woman of African and white heritage upon her marriage to a slave worker on the property. After his dealth, Custis' Arllington House was inherited by his daughter Mary Fitzhugh Custis, the wife of Robert E. Lee. Account books that R.E Lee kept while owner of Arlington House plantation have been recently released. The records indicate that mixed race slave women of Arlington House who may have been relatives were hired out to local businesses in the Washington area.

[Feral Child]

3. Well posted, locks.

Thanks.

[malaise]

4. Excellent post

Rec

[Bjorn Against]

5. Slavery may have ended a long time ago, but the damage it does to our nation endures

I appreciate your post because it speaks to the horrors of slavery without blaming the wrong people as other recent threads on slavery have done. It is not about whose ancestors owned slaves and whose did not, it is about who continues the legacy of racial oppression and who tries to move us closer to racial equality.

There are a number of ancestors of slave owners who realize the harm that racism does to society and work towards racial equality, just as there are people whose families had nothing to do with slavery yet they are extreme racists today.

In order to combat racism we need to know our history and recognize the past yet still live in the present. We need to combat those who are perpetuating racism today regardless of their ancestry and we also need to stand with those who are working to end racism.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Want to know what is was like to be a slave? You can hear their voices here.

In the late 30s the WPA recorded interviews with ex-slaves. Just click on them and listen to what slavery was about from the slaves viewpoint. There are also books available of the transcripts on Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere. I've read many and "happy, smiling, dancing, etc" doesn't appear often.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/title.html

[mountain grammy]

9. Thank you for posting this link.. I have it bookmarked

and have been sharing it with my grandchildren. This is our history that our schools won't teach.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. My pleasure.

[locks]

8. I appreciate the responses and

forgot to mention that we were with a small group making the tour which takes about one and a half hours. At the end I was taking a picture when a middle aged white woman came over to me and said, "I'm a sixth generation Haydel and my daughter is seventh generation. We came because we feel it is important for our family to see and all people to know about this plantation." Her great-great-great grandfather was Ambrose Haydel, the German immigrant who owned the plantation and the slaves who built it..

[mountain grammy]

10. K & R and thank you for this excellent post

[heaven05]

11. thank you

for real american history. +10,000. Heads on pikes. How barbaric. But Michael Brown lay uncovered in the streets for hours after his execution/murder. So not much has changed. And now we have a Senate and HOS full of these types of barbarians, voted in by good ameriKKKans on Nov 4, 2014.