Plantations Are Hallowed Ground
On reverance and reckoning.
In the June 2020 issue of Vanity Fair, the profile of Janelle Monáe was intensely inspiring. Included was this halting passage about Southern plantations: Girard Bush, who cowrote and directed the movie Antebellum with Christopher Renz, in which Monáe stars, says,
“It was an incredibly difficult experience for her. These plantations — where people are getting married — these are places that should be considered hallowed ground. It should be Auschwitz. You should walk this ground with that kind of respect for the suffering that took place on that land. She was committed to honoring the ancestors.”
Soon after I read that passage, the Whitney Plantation Facebook page posted this June 24, 2020 statement, “Over 350 people were enslaved at Whitney plantation throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Our tour has always focused on the brutal labor and stolen freedom of those that created vast economic wealth for the enslaving families. We do not glamorize the Big House or the grounds. In addition to our mission to educate visitors in a larger community about slavery and its legacies, our site is a place of memory and reverence. Our on-site memorials list of the names of individuals who were enslaved at Whitney, individuals who were enslaved throughout Louisiana, children who died during enslavement, and a memorial for…
