Visiting the Whitney Plantation

Tags

History, Louisiana, Racial Justice

I had the opportunity to visit the Whitney Planation on Sunday with a group of NOSHA  folks. The plantation is about 45 minutes from New Orleans along the Mississippi River but it takes you back in time to a dark period of our history – when our country was being built on the backs of slaves.

This is the only plantation in Louisiana that tells the story of slavery with the exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people. You begin by reading about the Western slave trade from the beginning (the papal decree of 1452) followed by information about slavery in the United States in general, in Louisiana specifically and at the Whitney Planation in detail (initially established in 1752 to farm indigo and still an active sugar cane plantation decades after the Civil War).

The plantation is a mix of original structures and replicas. The hour long guided tour begins with a video in the Antioch (originally named Anti-Yoke) church established by free people of color in a nearby parish. Throughout the interior are a number of clay statues to the children of the plantation. They are a stark reminder of how many childhoods were lost during that shameful period of American history.

Outside is the Wall of Honor listing the slaves of the plantation. As their team of researchers discovers more, that info is placed on plaques in the area. A lot of the oral history used is based on narratives collected during the Great Depression in the 1930’s by the Federal Writers Project (part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration). Many of those who were still alive to tell their stories had been children at the time of emancipation.

Reflecting on the wall

Next stop was a memorial garden of the 107,000 enslaved people of Louisiana that lists all the names that have so far been found – some with dates of birth and place of origin, some with nothing but a name. Inset in large type among the names are quotes on daily life, punishments and forced breedings taken from the oral histories. At the end of the memorial is an artist’s rendition of a longboat – the small boats that brought slaves from the slave ship to the shore.

We next visited the Field of Angels which memorializes 2,200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish. The number comes from the records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, as the Catholic Church required all children to be baptized during that time.

Angel cradling a baby

We then walked to the slave quarters – basic 2 room structures that, during harvest, could have more than 10 people per room. Not a very restful place after working a 16 hour day – hardly heated in winter and no way to cool in the summer. From there we moved past many of the other structures (some still in the restoration process and not yet open to the public) to the Big House. We passed a steel jail where slaves were kept prior to auction, the overseers house, the blacksmiths shop, the carriage house, smokehouses and the kitchen (separate from the house because of the danger of fire).

Even the Big House is centered on the enslaved folks who worked it – we entered through the back door, as slaves were required to do and saw the small child who was the companion slave of the mistress. Before the tour starts, each visitor is given a name of a child on a card and Hannah’s story was the one I wore around my neck.

Not all of the buildings or objects within them are intrinsic to the plantation but, rather, have been brought to it from other locations to tell the whole story of slavery. Doing so may not be authentic to the plantation’s history but it definitely increases their impact. Seeing everything in one place is powerfully moving.

The final exhibit contains sculpted heads, which are replicas of those beheaded for their role in the 1811 German Coast slave revolt. About 500 enslaved people rose up in several parishes, planning to travel along the Mississippi to New Orleans where they would take the city and free the black people. Federal troops ended the uprising on the third day, once the escaped slaves ran out of ammunition. Those captured were executed and their heads were displayed on poles along 60 miles of the river as a warning to the other slaves.

This is not a museum to the genteel Antebellum period that you’ll get from other plantations. This is not a nostalgic look back at life before the Civil War. Instead, it is the monument to the Confederacy that we all should see.

The Whitney Plantation makes real the truth of how America was made and covers history from a perspective many of us have never considered when we think of our nation’s past.

It is a very personal reckoning of the human toll of slavery. And it is a reckoning more of us need to make.

Guided tours are offered everyday but Tuesday from 10am to 3 pm
Whitney Plantation – 5099 Highway 18, Wallace, LA 70049
www.whitneyplantation.com
Advance ticket purchase is recommended

Silence is Consent

Tags

Racial Justice, Women's Rights

I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent racist words from the 45th president of the United States.

I’m also thinking about how few of the men at Golden Globes used the opportunity to do more than wear #TimesUp lapel pins.

And, here on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Day, I’m reminded of one of his most powerful sayings:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

We have a chance today to stand up for our friends and allies. In New Orleans, the events celebrating what would have been the 89th birthday of this great civil rights leader begin at 9am at A.L. Davis Park (2600 Lasalle Street). Check your local news for events in your area.

Why should white people and especially white women go to these events? Because when we stand together, we live our commitment to community. If we have any hope of building trust and having credibility, we must show up for our brothers and sisters of color.

Standing up for justice removes all doubt you have in the content of your character. Being silent in the face of injustice, bullying and harassment is the first step in diminishing self-confidence. It is incrementally detrimental and the next time, you might not be able to act at all. We judge ourselves by our actions and, even though our voice might shake, we must speak out anyway.

Later in the month, on January 20th, there will be Women’s Marches across the nation. Here in New Orleans, we will gather at Duncan Plaza for step off at noon.

I hope to see you out there protesting, marching and, someday soon, celebrating. Taking our activism to the streets reinforces our collective power and reminds us of what all we’re fighting for.

Be mindful of keeping our focus on fighting the power, not each other. We must lift each other up if we are to raise the nation from this quagmire.

After the March is over, don’t forget what that solidarity felt like. Use that energy as you persist to resist.

And, never be silent again.

 

It is not enough to not be a raging racist asshole

Tags

Politics, Racial Justice, Rant

The disgusting outpouring of racist fury at the University of Virginia over the weekend is the culmination of our indulging in 160 years of Confederate nostalgia. I’m a southerner and I’ve participated in it firsthand but it is time to face facts – those who created the Confederate power structure and waged war against the United States of America were traitors.

Surviving white separatists and their fellow travelers didn’t take losing the Civil War lying down. They have gone on to scream and rail against every advancement of the American dream to people of color by any means necessary. They are domestic terrorists who bomb churches, shoot up nightclubs and plow vehicles into crowds of their opponents.

It is a false narative that supporters of statues honoring figures of the Confederacy simply want to see history represented fairly and truthfully. No one forgets history simply because there isn’t a statue of it. Also, keep in mind, most of the statues were installed following two waves of reactionary racism – the first at the end of Reconstruction and the rest when the fight to end desegregation began. Furthermore, if merely remembering the past was their goal, they sure as shit wouldn’t be celebrating Nazism.

Glorifying hatred, bigotry, and racism is wrong. It must be resisted and rejected at every turn.

In the already infamous photo of torch-carrying white racists surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson, we see buried in the image 3 brave UVA students, terrified, but holding strong behind a hand-painted sign reading “UVA Students Against White Supremacy”, backs up against the statue, surrounded by white thugs. Let them be our guides. – Sarah Schulman

This is not a matter on which reasonable people can disagree. Those we saw carrying Tiki torches in Charlottesville are despicable human beings who espouse an indefensible belief in racial and cultural superiority.

Racism must be combatted everyday by every one of us. White people cannot stand on the sideline, saying and doing nothing. Please – this is the moment where our silence puts us on the side of hate. This is the time when we have to decide which side we stand on and whether we are going to take this nation forward or backward.

Let us prove that this is not who we are as Americans.

I stand against racism. I stand against hate. I stand against bigotry.

I stand for equality. I stand for racial justice.

I stand because #BlackLivesMatter.

 

Taking a Walk In Someone Else’s Shoes

Tags

New Orleans, Racial Justice

So I was called ISIS on Twitter (this is the same person who retweeted David Duke, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt). I really don’t think the name calling means what the poster thinks it means as I have never advocated blowing up the monuments or murdering those who don’t share my beliefs.

However, such overly dramatic emotionalism of the defenders of the Confederacy has a long history. In Jefferson Davis’ own words:

Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.

And the fighting goes on: the Louisiana Lieutenant Governor beseeching the President to declare the statues federal monuments and the Louisiana House of Representatives passing a bill to prohibit the removal of such statues unless approved by public vote.

In addition, there are self described nationalists, hardcore patriots, alt-right activists, white power advocates and Confederate apologists descending on the city from across the nation. With AK-47’s in their arms and pistols on their hips, they’ve declared a new Battle for New Orleans and plan to defend the monuments, even unto death.

Removal, mind you, that was proposed in 2015 by the duly elected mayor, passed by a majority vote of the elected city council and, after it was contested legally by white supremacists, the removal was affirmed by a judge in federal court.

Despite the hyperbole, nothing is being destroyed or erased. In fact, our understanding of that entire time period may be enhanced with the inclusion of more context in a museum setting. It is certainly time students learned more than the myths. And that we all truly understood more about the costs.

Almost every African American you’ve ever met had ancestors who were brought to this country in shackles. They were kept uneducated by law and counted as less than a person by our Constitution. Women of color were raped with impunity and forced to breed. Their children were auctioned as property with no regard to family bonds or parental rights. They could be forced to work for more than twelve hours a day in the fields when the harvest was due. They could be starved, beaten and killed by their owners. Families were torn apart and, if you don’t think that hurt, then read some of the heartbreaking information wanted ads from after the war and emancipation.

African Americans have clearly said that it hurts when we celebrate slave owners and leaders of the lost cause. Can any need for historical validation excuse our doing that which causes others pain? Especially when the history is of a system that was cruel to poor whites and brutal to people of color?

Remember, too, that these monuments are at major intersections in the city, which thousands pass daily. Can you understand the revulsion of having your tax dollars used to maintain and preserve statues honoring those who bought and sold your ancestors and fought to ensure the practice continued?

As Representative John Bagneris said during the House floor debate, “It hurts to know you don’t feel the pain I feel.”

And that is the crux of this. We white people haven’t been willing to feel the pain of our brothers and sisters.

People of color have to deal with racism every day, in so many micro aggressions as well as institutionalized in the systems they access daily. Why do we then insist on keeping public monuments that glorify white supremacy they have to see every day?

Put yourself in their place for just a moment. Being empathetic isn’t easy but is something we must do if we are ever to find common ground.

There is a way to be proud of being Southern without just focusing on the Confederacy. We have so many leaders and legends who come from our states. Our regional music and literature is enjoyed the world over. We have food to make angels weep and weather to soothe body and soul. Can we take pride in what we have to live for, instead of what far too many died for?

Please, don’t let the removal of these monuments destroy our relationships with our fellow Louisianians. We’re the only ones who get us. We’re the only ones we have.

The Louisiana Senate next takes up HB 71. Please contact your elected representative to stop this bad bill.

The barricades are empty now

Tags

New Orleans, Politics, Racial Justice

The barricades are empty now.
Lee stands alone again.
Glaring North at his foes,
Heedless to the truth beneath his feet:
That the monsters are already here;
inside
inerasable
insatiable
We have met the enemy;
It is us.

©Mary Griggs 2017

Fold It Up And Put It Away

Tags

New Orleans, Politics, Racial Justice

David Cox, the rector of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Church in Lexington, Virginia, wrote a column about Lee and reconciliation in 2014. In it, he recounted a story about a woman asking him what to do with an old Confederate battle flag. Lee responded by saying, “Fold it up and put it away.”

Statues, monuments and/or naming streets or parks for someone is a way to honor them as well as to glorify their time period. By the same token, we also have a right to change the values expressed in our public spaces by our forebearers. History is replete with names changed to reflect changing times – in 2001, the New Orleans International Airport was renamed the Louis Armstrong Airport. This is after it was originally named for aviator John Bevins Moisant and the Moisant Stock Yards it was built upon (hence the MSY aircode designation).

The first monument to come down is the one memorializing the Battle of Liberty Place. It was erected in 1891 to commemorate the Crescent City White League attempt to overthrow the city’s Reconstructionist government after the Civil War.

The inscription on the Liberty Place monument when it was erected.

Such a monument is an affront in our minority-majority city. As we approach the anniversary of the city’s surrender to the Union (April 29, 1862), the fully half of the citizenry who find the statues offensive have the right and the duty to remake New Orleans in a way which is uplifting and inclusive instead of reactionary and divisive.

Do we really need such painful public reminders that a war was fought to keep the ancestors of our African American brothers and sisters enslaved? No! It is past time to honor other people and ideals.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said:

Relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile — and most importantly– choose a better future. We can remember these divisive chapters in our history in a museum or other facility where they can be put in context – and that’s where these statues belong.

Exactly – the emblems of the Old South including Confederate flags, would be better displayed in Civil War parks or cemeteries where people who want to see them can do so.

Another of the statues to come down is that of Robert E. Lee, who never even visited New Orleans. His Confederate-uniformed image glaring northward in what once was Tivoli Circle is not a that of the principled, honorable man who worked to reconcile the nation and later became a university president. It is of a soldier who commanded the losing side during a war in which nearly 2% of the population, an estimated 620,000 men, lost their lives in the line of duty. Hundreds of thousands more died of disease and this doesn’t even begin to discuss the civilian impact. Read this letter if you want to know which side his descendants come down on – A Letter from Robert E. Lee IV Regarding the Lee Chapel Flags.

I am all for remembering history because those who don’t are condemned to repeat it. But it needs to be actual history we remember, not the alternative one that is so often mythologized by apologists for the Confederacy.

It’s 2017. It is past time to take them down and put them away.

Absolute Ruin of the Country

Tags

History, Racial Justice

The South Carolina and American flags fly at half-staff as the Confederate flag unfurls below at the Confederate Monument in Columbia, S.C. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Instead of simply enjoying myself at the National NOW Conference, I spent time today in an online debate about removing the Confederate flag that flies over so many Southern capital buildings.

Just having it hang there is bad enough but I find it really galling when the flag of the United States was lowered to half mast following the hate crime massacre at the historic Charleston, South Carolina church, the flag of the Confederacy continued to wave from the top of the flag pole on the Columbia, South Carolina Capital grounds.

After 150 years, that flag needs to come down from our statehouses and go to rest in a museum.

Don’t tell me that the flag is a symbol of pride. Who can be proud about protecting slavery? Or for starting a war in which 750,000 soldiers died (about two percent of the population)?

I will state it clearly – the South went to war over slavery.

Don’t believe me?

Please read words of the leaders of the successions movement and the documents from the time:

In its declaration of secession, Mississippi stated, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world … a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

In its justification of secession, Texas sums up its view of a union built upon slavery: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”

To read other states Declarations of Succession, go to Declarations of Causes of Seceding States. South Carolina’s is very interesting, as they actually argue against states rights on the issue of returning escaped slaves.

Slavery was embedded in the Confederate Constitution:

• Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
• Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”

Let us not mince words. The South sought to destroy the United States, not only through war but in the very act of secession. The Confederates started and lost a war that very nearly destroyed the country. The cause was unjust, the economic justification despicable. Their very actions were treasonous.

That is the real heritage of the Confederate flag.

This is hard for me. I’m speaking as someone who had members of her family who fought for the Southern side (and one who spent time in an Ohio prisoner of war camp) but I tell you there is no moral high ground here.

Even the Supreme Court has ruled that refusing to print a Confederate flag on a state license plate is not a violation of the First Amendment regarding free speech. When Texas turned down a plate featuring the Confederate flag, the board of the Motor Vehicles Department said, “A significant portion of the public,” the board said, “associates the Confederate flag with organizations advocating expressions of hate directed toward people or groups that is demeaning to those people or groups.”

If the Texas bureaucracy can see that, I would hope the rest of us can, too.

It has been a 150 years. It is time for the Confederate flags on public buildings to come down!

Here are a couple of petitions. Maybe they work but putting your name on them is just the first step.

https://www.change.org/p/all-legislators-nationwide-make-all-states-that-have-a-confederate-flag-in-a-government-building-remove-it

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/remove-the-confederate-3

The next step is working with your state’s legislature to bring them all down.

***

The quote in the title is from Virginia Senator Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter. As printed in the Congressional Globe, Senate, 31st Congress, 1st Session on March 25, 1850, he said, “What if I can show that if the object of emancipating our slaves in the South were accomplished, the infallible consequence would be the absolute ruin of the country?”

No Stars By Night, No Sun By Day

Tags

Racial Justice

My thoughts on the conservative response to the tragic shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

With tongue firmly in cheek:

1. When it is a white guy, it is always a lone gunman with no ties to any organized group,
2. It is never terrorism when a white Christian does it (unless you are attempting to use the anti-gay rhetoric that liberal society hates biblical Christians so this isn’t about race at all but persecution),
3. Young, white men who commit atrocious crimes are sick or unstable or mentally ill, never thugs
4. ALL crimes are “hate crimes” and punishing people for thinking bad thoughts while they murder people because of the color of their skin would give certain victims ‘special rights’
5. It doesn’t matter how many massacres there are, it is always TOO EARLY to talk about sensible gun safety
6. It isn’t about race when a white man who has cold-bloodedly killed nine people and flees the jurisdiction is arrested without a single shot fired while a person of color, walking down the street can be gunned down by police
7. But we’re in a post racial society because the President of the United States is black

In all seriousness, my heart grieves for the families and friends of the victims and for the citizens of this nation.

I don’t have a lot of words of my own but Charles Pierce in Esquire had a great piece – Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable. Please read and share it.

The words of Langston Hughes in his poem The Bitter River have never felt more real:

There is a bitter river
Flowing through the South.
Too long has the taste of its water
Been in my mouth.
There is a bitter river
Dark with filth and mud.
Too long has its evil poison
Poisoned my blood.

I’ve drunk of the bitter river
And its gall coats the red of my tongue,
Mixed with the blood of the lynched boys
From its iron bridge hung,
Mixed with the hopes that are drowned there
In the snake-like hiss of its stream
Where I drank of the bitter river
That strangled my dream:
The book studied-but useless,
Tool handled-but unused,
Knowledge acquired but thrown away,
Ambition battered and bruised.
Oh, water of the bitter river
With your taste of blood and clay,
You reflect no stars by night,
No sun by day.

The bitter river reflects no stars-
It gives back only the glint of steel bars
And dark bitter faces behind steel bars:
The Scottsboro boys behind steel bars,
Lewis Jones behind steel bars,
The voteless share-
cropper behind steel bars,
The labor leader behind steel bars,
The soldier thrown from a Jim Crow bus behind steel bars,
The 150 mugger behind steel bars,
The girl who sells her body behind steel bars,
And my grandfather’s back with its ladder of scars
Long ago, long ago-
the whip and steel bars-
The bitter river reflects no stars.

“Wait, be patient,” you say.
“Your folks will have a better day.”
But the swirl of the bitter river
Takes your words away.
“Work, education, patience
Will bring a better day-”
The swirl of the bitter river
Carries your “patience” away.
“Disrupter!
Agitator!
Trouble maker!” you say.

The swirl of the bitter river
Sweeps your lies away.
I did not ask for this river
Nor the taste of its bitter brew.
I was given its water
As a gift from you.
Yours has been the power
To force my back to the wall
And make me drink of the bitter cup
Mixed with blood and gall.

You have lynched my comrades
Where the iron bridge crosses the stream,
Underpaid me for my labor,
And spit in the face of my dream.
You forced me to the bitter river
With the hiss of its snake-like song-
Now your words no longer have meaning-
I have drunk at the river too long:
Dreamer of dreams to be broken,
Builder of hopes to be smashed,
Loser from an empty pocket
Of my meagre cash,
Bitter bearer of burdens
And singer of weary song,
I’ve drunk at the bitter river
With its filth and its mud too long.
Tired now of the bitter river,
Tired now of the pat on the back,
Tired now of the steel bars
Because my face is black,
I’m tired of segregation,
Tired of filth and mud,
I’ve drunk of the bitter river
And it’s turned to steel in my blood.

Oh, tragic bitter river
Where the lynched boys hung,
The gall of your bitter water
Coats my tongue.
The blood of your bitter water
For me gives back no stars.
I’m tired of the bitter river!
Tired of the bars.

We have to talk about this. We have to commit to ensuring our communities are safe from hateful acts of violence. It starts with us.

Say it with me: I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. *

*Quote from Edward Everett Hale