I'm from Louisiana, so my social media feeds have been filled with news about Nottoway Plantation—which was destroyed in a fire last week.
Black Enterprise describes Nottoway as "a monument to Southern grandeur built on the backs of enslaved Black people." The fire started on May 15 and raged for more than 40 hours, burning the 160-year-old "estate-turned-resort" to the ground.
According to Black Enterprise, the 53,000 square-foot property, which had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980, was once the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the South. While many mourn the loss, others, as Black Enterprise puts it, "see poetic justice in the ashes of a plantation that never meaningfully confronted its legacy of slavery."
They continue:
Built in 1859 by sugar magnate John Hampden Randolph, the estate was powered by the forced labor of more than 150 enslaved people, a fact often glossed over in tourist brochures . . .
In recent decades, the property was marketed as a wedding venue and luxury getaway—complete with plantation balls—without so much as a public reckoning with the atrocities committed on its grounds.
Once a house of horrors, the Nottoway Plantation eventually rebranded itself as a museum, only to be repackaged again as a luxury resort. What was once a site of brutal human trafficking became the Nottoway Resort, complete with wedding packages, guest suites, and even a tennis court. Plantation tourism disguised as Southern charm.
I just glanced at the "Nottoway Plantation & Resort" website and, indeed, its landing page prominently features weddings and parties, and points visitors to learning more about Nottoway's "accomodations," "dining," "tours, "corporate events," "wedding and social events," "bridal portraits," and more. And here's how the Nottoway describes itself:
Nottoway is one of the South's largest historic mansions, located on the famous River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. The mansion's massive white columns and grand balconies stand guard over the Mississippi River, while on the north side, the spectacular three-story Rotunda overlooks sweeping, oak-draped lawns.
After this description, they welcome visitors and state that they'd "love" to share the "fascinating history, the enchanting luxury, and the warm hospitality of Nottoway!" Because, yeah, sure, nothing says "warm hospitality" like a site of brutal human enslavement, torture, and trafficking.
I feel like everyone should already know this, but, now seems like a great time to remind people, for the umpteenth time, that plantation weddings are wrong! This piece from The Guardian from 2019, that outlines (and debunks) many of the excuses people use to justify their plantation dream weddings, remains relevant today, sadly:
. . . that slavery was in the past, that it wasn't that bad, that the splendor of plantations has outlived whatever negativity they might represent.
I've read every single one of these defenses, all over social media, of Nottoway "Resort" in the last week from folks mourning its loss. None of these excuses justify literally whitewashing history, however. As The Guardian states:
Historical texts, news articles and academic research are all available for anyone genuinely interested in examining slavery's brutality, which was often most severe in the deep south states where slave-owners built plantation mansions. If anything, the cruelty of the institution has been underestimated. Southern school districts are known to issue textbooks reducing enslaved black men, women and children to mere "workers" – rather than what they were: forced laborers who often lived in perpetual terror and were sold as property with no human rights.
And of course absolutely nothing justifies making money from a site so filled with horror and trauma. A netizen quoted by Black Enterprise makes this point clear:
"Generations of human beings were held captive, tortured, raped, mutilated, and worked to death in plantations. Let the sadistic ghouls who wanna hold their weddings and parties at Nottoway find another concentration camp for their happy occasion."
Luckily, there are some plantations in the South that are doing justice to history by telling the truth. In the wake of the Nottoway fire, the Whitney Plantation—a non-profit museum whose mission is to "educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the United States"—posted a statement explaining why they would never host parties or weddings, and reiterating their mission as a museum and memorial site:
The Whitney Plantation in Louisiana stands apart from many Southern estates by refusing to host weddings or celebratory events on its grounds. Unlike other plantations that market themselves as picturesque venues, Whitney is dedicated to education and remembrance, focusing on the brutal reality of slavery that shaped its history. The site serves as a museum and memorial, honoring the lives of enslaved people who suffered, labored, and died there.
The leadership at Whitney Plantation has made it clear that they do not glamorize the main house or the grounds. Their mission is to educate visitors about slavery and its legacies, not to provide a backdrop for parties that could overshadow or disrespect the memory of those who endured unimaginable cruelty on the property. They believe that celebrating weddings in such a location erases the suffering that occurred and sends a harmful message about whose stories matter.
Instead of mourning the loss of a plantation house, we should be pushing for all remaining plantations to be converted into museums that honestly confront the horrors that happened there. Germany has set a powerful example by turning concentration camps and other sites of atrocity into places of education and remembrance, not celebration. Plantations in the United States should follow this model, ensuring that these sites are dedicated to telling the truth about slavery and honoring the memory of those who suffered, rather than serving as venues for parties or romanticized nostalgia.
Laura Plantation, which opened to the public in 1994 and was the first historic site in Louisiana to include the stories of enslaved Africans, also takes a no-weddings stance. Laura Plantation describes its mission, which focuses specifically on the people who were enslaved at Laura within the context of Creole Louisiana as a former French colony shifting into "Americanness":
As the leading interpreter of the experience of enslaved people in Louisiana and following years of extensive research in the United States and France, in February 2017, Laura Plantation opened a permanent exhibit dedicated to telling the authentic story of the enslaved community of this Créole farm.
Here, the compelling personal stories of individual men, women and children are told. Designed around different themes reflecting the complex layers of life on the plantation, the displays illustrate how the lives of the enslaved people, both Créole and American, were intertwined with those of their owners. Religion, health, the division of labor and the Civil War are explained in the first three rooms. The fourth holds a large collection of purchase documents and rare photographs that bring to light the names and faces of these long-forgotten people.
Visit their websites to learn more about Whitney Plantation and Laura Plantation.
