Finding Historically Accurate Plantation Travel Sites

Missing from tours at more than 600 former plantations located across the southern U.S. and dozens of others located in Caribbean countries are complete narratives reflecting the experiences of enslaved Africans whose bondage and labor fueled the plantation system through the late 19th century.

Today, most plantation tours focus on the bucolic Victorian beauty of finely landscaped plantation grounds and their magnificent mansions in the U.S. and “great houses” in the Caribbean.

ADVERTISING

Some, located atop hills overlooking acres of fertile farmland or framed by tree-lined settings, today host hundreds of thousands of U.S. destination wedding travelers. Less prominent but no less an integral to plantations is the reality of enslaved persons’ lives there.

The beauty and grandeur found across plantations in the U.S. and Caribbean generally belie a full accounting of the experience its enslaved residents faced. Still, there are a handful of one-time plantations where travelers can grasp a full understanding of what occurred in these settings from the perspective of the enslaved residents.

Restorative Power

One think tank, The Better Together Project (TBTP) recently launched an initiative to encourage plantations across the U.S. south to promote the memorialization of enslaved African-Americans’ experience with narrative displays, memorials, statues and sculptures.

TBTP has identified the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana as the sole former U.S. plantation whose grounds focus exclusively on the enslaved people who lived there and the atrocities they experienced.

The Whitney Plantation was established as a museum in December 2014 by New Orleans trial attorney and founder John Cummings, who over 15 years restored the property. The museum has hosted more than 375,000 international visitors since its opening.

The Whitney Plantation museum’s resources document themes ranging from the history of slavery in Louisiana and the United States to the “permanent and very common” practice of fleeing enslavement. Escaping slavery came to be known as “marronage” after the runaway Maroon communities living in New Orleans’ swamps.

A Living Chronicle

In the Caribbean, Martinique’s La Savane des Esclaves (“The Savanna of the Slaves”), is a two-hectare open-air museum created to replicate a post-slavery indigenous village and farm. The site’s traditional houses are built of palisades wood with beaten earth floors and cane-leaf roofs.

Conceived and operated by Martinique native Gilbert Larose, the working farm cultivates produce via organic farming strategies. Larose also raises plants with medicinal qualities utilized for generations by African and Caribbean people.

His museum is the museum’s emotional centerpiece. Through paintings, sculptures and historical drawings and photographs, it offers a frank and accurate documentation of slavery in Martinique and the Caribbean, including sobering depictions of slave revolts, marronage tableaus and paintings of African captives leaping from trans-Atlantic vessels to escape enslavement.

La Savane documents a tortured history filled with incredible suffering. But it also incorporates uplifting facets, including a detailing of enslaved Martinique citizens’ transition to freedom following slavery’s end on the island in 1848.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean, travelers to Curacao’s Westpunt neighborhood in the Otrobanda district will find one of the Caribbean’s largest displays of African artifacts at the Kura Hulanda Museum.

An anthropological institution focused on Curacao’s predominant cultures, Kura Hulanda faithfully chronicles slavery’s devastating impact on Curacao’s African population. The museum also documents Curacao’s post-slavery society. The surrounding streets feature 65 restored historic buildings, gardens and decorative sculptures.

A broader acknowledgment and of the experience of plantations’ enslaved populations in the United States and the Caribbean is the next step in forging a more accurate depiction of the plantation narrative for culturally driven travelers. For now, visitors to Curacao, Louisiana and Martinique have options that remain absent in other destinations.

Read more from the source page