By the descendents of the original founders all that congregation. Y bought the land in 1870 two parcels of land with the express purpose of building a house of worship. They named their structure they named their congregation the antiyokut baptist congregation and that message of being against the yoke or against slavery is important for our story here. This is important for slaves on the east bank, so its really. Mportant we like to start our tour at the lady plantation, where we can kind of the what happens to people, some of the things they care about after freedom came. The whitney plantation is the only plan to show in that is devoted to taking andour owner started we had to kind of build it, build some things here. All of these things help us tell the story of slavery. The John Cummings built property, there were no original slave cabins. We had to move those in from elsewhere. This helped us round out our story and then we had other buildings. Collection. And at the end of slavery, they give the progress to the administration in the 1930s. We love the narrative of slaves in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on this site. In the 1930s, when they were taking the narratives of enslaved people, they were in their 80s and 90s and when they were enslaved, they were just children. These are the experiences of happen and things that to their parents and grandparents. And john law with his family, they sailed from france and came here. In indigo until the late 18th century, early 19th century. First planters and we are in the climate zone. We could not really, no one has really been able to take it the full way before that. Over was someone who came after the revolution and all of the planters followed after that. Right around the time the first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not really a viable crop anymore. Planted today. Industry. A gigantic they are now sent off to the dominoes refinery. Successive generations around the plantation, all of africanr of african and descended people. Many successive generations were enslaved here. So the population would have changed over time. The highest number we have 101, butat any time is we believe its a little low. We believe theres perhaps as many as 200 people. We had a record of 300 people. But there will be a lot of people miss saying. We will not really start introducing that population. Towill begin with a memorial people enslaved on this land. This is the wall of honor. On this memorial we have recorded the names and basic information of 354 individuals we have been able to find enslaved on this land. This memorial is it moves through time. , there is the 18th century and we are the first generation of enslaved people. We do not know anyone who is enslaved here. So these are people who were already missing. This is information that comes from sale documents. Peoples names are not always recorded when they are enslaved. If you look at things like census records it just includes the tally of how many people. Involved. A notary they had to go through the archives to find the sales and purchases. Where someone came from, how old they were, whether they came children, this is something that would affect their price at sale. These are different territories. So, in louisiana, for a very long time it was illegal to parentsildren away from. Later on it was codified. So, you see things like this. These are all people who have a lot, a lot being sold together. So, we have basic information and theres really not a lot the information can tell us, but we are able to tease out a little bit. One thing we notice, all of notice them we on this board, and their names, like michelle, are european names. There are a few spanish names as well. People were not born in africa with these names. That tells you something about the cultural annihilation, the way cultures are taken from them. Slave traders often renight renamed people. When people are sold from one theyation to another, change things. We often use the example of solomon northrup. Was 12 years slave in louisiana and lost for that time was he was never sold and he was living for 12 years , whichhe name of platt was not his given name. That was an experience a lot of people had in you can see that in various narratives. Even though there is this problem of names being taken away from people, there are people who have african names. Here is a person named mingo, which is an african name. We have someone names samba. A male born on a wednesday. These are cultural names that circumstances of someones birth. A muslim. N was people traded into slavery became from north africa were likely to have been exposed to islam through trading through arab world. This is something that tells us a little bit about the religion and culture of people who came to the new world as slaves. People came from wildly disparate groups. People came to the americas enslaved. In some cases they were catholic. The congo is officially catholic. Some people would be bringing indigenous. S they are going to the mainland of the United States. Theres another chance for that and westlending african and caribbean religions coming into louisiana. It is also important to note selected by were slave traders for specific skills they had. Most of the people who are slaves in louisiana, about 60 were gambian. People came to different parts for different reasons. Slave very first two of thosee captain ships were under orders to find skilled indigo growers. They were trying to establish in indigo economy in louisiana and the european traders did not. Ave the skills implanting had needed someone who skill processing. The same thing with rice. They bring those into louisiana and also South Carolina. There is trading going on to the pacific market in the United States to fill the market there and fill that crop. So, most of the people here in , there are aears few people born in the caribbean. Are coming internationally. Something that is important to note during the time of the atlantic slave trade is the vast majority of settlement was african, compulsory. Of all the people who crossed from the old world to the new world, four of five came from africa. The vast majority of movement was enslaved africans. There are not really good estimates of the number. The best historian was done that work came to an estimate of 12. 5 Million People. These are people who did not get to the coast. They got on the boat and came across. This is an and norman us and ormous the en aspera. The vastrity majority was into the caribbean. Internationalthe slave trade in 1807, which did not cut it off, but significantly lowered the movement. People were still being pirated. Still being smuggled. The last arrived in the united or 1860. 1859 right up until the end of the civil war, people were being snuck in. Thehe exact same time, lines here were just beginning to be developed. So, at the same time people are buying up large tracts of land and increasing their need and. Eliance on compulsory labor the culture here. Theres a very robust slave trade in the wake of that. We can see this happening here. There are a few people born on what is called the east coast, instead of, in the old world or , and on then reverse side of the wall you will see a large number. Here, all of a sudden, all of these people are listed. East coast. East coast is probably virginia. And you can see they probably come from an english plantation from their names. They no longer have french or spanish names. Not so many african names. You see a lot of people coming plantations. Owned an enormousade was in movement of people. After the conclusion of the International Slave trade, one Million People were moved from the upper south virginia, maryland, tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina little bit, but most of it was tennessee, virginia, North Carolina, and they were moved downriver to mississippi, alabama. Large scale plantations. To give you a sense of the difference in the plantations i come from North Carolina a lot of the tobacco plantations in North Carolina, tobacco is very harmful for the soil and the soil has to lie fallow. Scalehey needed smaller labor. Slaves. 25, 50 we had a hundred and one on this plantation. Was a labor force. You can see that there is a greater need for largescale ,abor and in the upper south they have a Larger Population of women. They were encouraging family units. Part of the value of an enslaved woman was her reproductive potential and slavers talked by talking about her increase. They wouldwas given, talk about sally and her increase all of that reproductive potential belonged to the person who owned that woman. Because a great value they could make exponentially more money selling off those children. The majority of people he came from the upper south where their teens and 20s. Overland. Em marched over land. Some of it was on a riverboat in mississippi. Some of it was down the atlantic seaboard. But nor lians was the hardest at trade. And there was this constant flow of people coming down to new orleans. This is where you can see all that happening. History given to us by the descendents of one of the people in slave here. They describe this process of people being taken from the south. Anna is a girl born on the east coast. She was purchased to be a gift. As the family has related to us, anna lived inside the big house and had an interesting relationship with the family. People who lived in the big often hadwere slaves a strange relationship we cant really understand today. She was a slave and would have been treated as such, but also would have been very close to the family. And the reason why that is significant is because of her son. Was born in 1835. Brothermistress had a who impregnated anna. We dont know this was so long ago, we dont know if anna was raped where they had some kind of relationship. Although for enslaved women, there is no such thing as consent. So, victor would have been considered in louisiana one african ascended, three quarters european, and enslaved by his own family. This is one instance we know about, for certain. Of ownership. Many, many, many more people born of enslaved mothers and White Fathers and this was common throughout the south and those children born of those enslaved women would not necessarily be treated any weter and in many cases, read these narratives a little bit worse because usually there was a white wife in there somewhere who understood where these children were coming from. Relationship between the enslaved people and the enslaved andst enslaved people the slavers was not really bear. There were a lot of people of color existed here because of consensual relationships, where enslaved women would be free and given their own property. Theres a very different class. People of color. People enslaved by their own families as well. This is the gwendolyn hollow and transcribed the names of people enslaved tear through 1820. This is a day of a database the historian put together and there is talk now of extending it through 1865. But 107,000 people are inscribed inscribed here. We just have the names. These are coming from sale documents. We also have recorded very little snippets. Aroundw people to walk and reflect and read those names and the testimonials. This is the last memorial. Of angels. Field we put this memorial here for children who died in saint bob st. John the baptist parish. Home. S called coming along the wall. Dates, the ages, those who died, recorded in the church records. Our historian did the research. Collection. Rge these are people who are listed as little slaves, knee grow slave boys and girls. Some of these people were to be named. Oung that they had names even at three, but at dad, when they were born, they were born into a lowerclass and did not to lookortant enough into the origins of their name in life. Ae whitney plantation was sugar plantation. Land had ay, the sugar mill on its site as well. The people who were enslaved working the fields and probably the majority would have been occupied in sugar. They worked as domestics. This is kind of a little village. They made all the food here. They grew all the food here. Textiles, things like that. Sugar processing was at the end. F the year currently its early october. Sugar is growing and it will continue to grow until late october or early november. The goal is to have everything processed and done by christmas time. Christmas day, they want the field granulated. We brought these in from other places, but historically there would have been eight kettles like this and they would go from large to small. You can see this has a lip on it would be open on the bottom where there would be a fire underneath. Sugaral is to take the stock. Juice and take the. Oil it these would have to be this process and a day the people making the church would be using long handled scoopingd physically the juice and putting it in. Ooling pens this, as you can imagine would be a very hot and dangerous process. Sugar sap. Oiling not only would it get crusty and burn, which makes inferior product, but it could burn the people making the sugar, so it was dangerous in that way. The thing that makes sugar difficult and unique is it had to be processed as soon as it was cut. And sit onnot cut it it. Harvesting why the was extremely grueling and all of this done outside was also done at a very cold time of year. Enslaved workers would be working constantly on that. The whitney plantation does not have original slave cabins, as i mentioned. All of them were torn down by the 1970s. By the end of the civil war, there were 22 slave cabins on this site, and they looked about like this. Pretty typical. Its essentially a duplex. There would be a family on each side, if not a real family, a fictive family. Which was common in slavery, for people to form fictive kinship bonds. The slave cabins on this site were arranged the way we have brought these in. There would be two rows facing each other with a central courtyard. You can imagine that would have created a kind of community. These were set back from the plantation big house by about a half a mile. There was some physical distance between where the hydel family lived and slave enslaved workers lived. That distance is important in creating a sense of autonomy, although their movements were still controlled. People could not leave the plantation without a pass. An overseer would be monitoring them at all times of the day to make sure they got up at the right time, were at work at the right time, and got back to the cabins at the right time. That said, especially because of the distance and how there is so much space here, there are a lot of plantations on the river road, something that was very common in this region was something called running away a little bit. Maybe for a night. Especially since families tended to be separated, and it wasnt even necessarily a Long Distance. If a husband and wife were on neighboring plantations, they might be about two miles apart. Running away for a night to see a loved one and then coming back before dawn was extremely common. But that was all done with a certain degree of risk. If they got caught before they came back, even if they intended to come back, they could because be considered a runaway slave and be punished for that. Enslaved people would be in the cabins mostly at night. Cant see to cant see. From dawn until dusk they would be at their jobs and then come back to the cabinet nighttime. Cabins at nighttime. Nighttime at the cabin would be a time for communion with people who were there, the families, the fictive families, and food preparation. Enslaved people were given rations by the plantation owner. Typically, the most common thing you can read about in slave narratives are cornmeal and bacon. Bacon, fat back, pork belly, lots of fat, not a nutritious cut, and not considered really the high, good cut that the family would be eating. They would receive things like intestines, pig feet. These are things that have been sustained for a long time in southern cooking, but had their roots in the lower cuts given to enslaved people during slavery. Also very common in terms of the people aref enslaved things that originated in africa, blackeyed peas, watermelon, okra which is important here in louisiana for making gumbo. People brought with them their african foodways and supplemented the best they could with the ingredients they had here. People cooked in their cabins. There was usually a fireplace in the cabin where they could prepare meals. In a place like south louisiana where it is very, very hot, we imagine them preparing a campfire. So that they didnt have the smoke and heat inside their cabins. The furnishings in cabins were varied across time and space. All of these things would be different on different plantations. The way people were treated was different from plantation to plantation and regionally as well. We have a few things you can read about in slave narratives, where people talk about the types of furnishings they had. A rope bed like this is common. This is basically planks with ropes attached. What we have here is this rough kind of fabric with hay in the middle. You can see how that is constructed. In louisiana, it was also common to use spanish moss for stuffing for a bed. Another thing people did if they didnt have a bed, people talked about making a pallet on the floor. Thats something a lot of people experienced at different plantations. Again, solomon northrup never described sleeping on a bed for 12 years. He described sleeping on the pallet on the floor. People would be treated differently in different places. Beds like this, about the size of a full bed today, would be a bed for an entire family, so children, mom, dad, all sharing the space. You can see that there is not a lot of space in these cabins. There would not be much of a sense of privacy, what we would think of as being appropriate in a family and being private. All of that living was done in just a couple of rooms with everybody together. This is an 1868 jail. That we brought in. This is not a slave jail. Built in 1868, it is from a few years after the conclusion of slavery, but we brought it in as a learning tool so that we can see the types of typical spaces where enslaved people were confined, especially leading up to sales. This is a very typical design of that era. You can see, there are a few extant photographs of pens at auction houses that were similar to this. At an auction house, typically, like in new orleans, there would be a front room where the auction would take place, and in the back, a small courtyard with a row of cells. People could come out during the day and sleep in the cells at night. In addition to pens used in the marketing of enslaved people, there were also slave jails. In the new orleans Central Business district, there were two dozen slave jails at one time. People were locked up in the state penitentiary as well. All of the same rules applied to enslaved people if they were convicted of murder or theft, or any of those infractions, they would be locked up the same way a free person would, but of course, a lot of the punishment was done in a sort of extralegal fashion on the plantation. Plantations did have jaillike structures sometimes, where people could be confined as punishments, but typically they would be made of wood or brick, or people might be confined in a barn or extra room somewhere. That confinement was typical. A lot of people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana would at one time or another experience being sold at auction, especially since so many people who were enslaved in the lower south had come from the upper south. They had been sold off of a plantation and purchased by a slave trader and brought to new orleans to be sold at auction. This whole transaction of moving people from one part of the country to another to sell them is something that kind of the kind of elucidates the Market Forces behind enslavement. This is not just a southern institution. Of course, the raw goods produced in the south supplied the northern and foreign factories. The slave trade itself involved insurance agents, mortgage brokers, bankers. There was a lot of industry, northern and southern, involved in that. To give you an example, if a slave trader working out of virginia and new orleans and here the biggest one was Isaac Franklin if he purchased an enslaved person off the a plantation in the upper south, he would sometimes pay full cash value, but he would pay a wholesale rate. You can see how people were commodified. If he did not have the full cash amount, he could put a mortgage on that person. Then they would be insured for the time they were transferred transited to the lower south. He would cover all the expenses of moving them to the lower south, and then he would sell them at retail, about 100 more than what he bought them for. If he had a note, a mortgage, he would pay off the mortgage and pocket the profit. So, the same way we commodify houses, cars, livestock, these are the same Market Forces we in the commodification of human beings. Its being calculated on the ground. People were separated from loved ones. They were locked up in pens. They might be with their family and about to be sold from their family. Or theyve just traveled a Long Distance away from everything theyve known. All of that is being done with a price tag. People who were locked up in slave pens also had to sometimes wait for a long time for the market to be at the appropriate value to sell them at the highest return. So, if people made it to an auction house in new orleans and the price for slaves was low, sometimes, slave traders would just wait. They would just wait for those markets to improve so they could make a higher return on their investment. As far as the actual dollar amount, what people were being sold for in louisiana, a good rate that you see pretty commonly was about 900 to 1000. For somebody skilled, that might go up to 1500. Theres another seedy underbelly of the slave trade, something called the fancy trade. Girls and women who were considered beautiful and might be sold as concubines, to be used as sex slaves, they would cost an additional fee. Were talking 19th century money. When you translate it today, its an enormous amount of money. This area we are standing in is the whitney plantation historic district, where we have the highest concentration of original structures, all centered around the 1790s big house. Here we have the original site of the kitchen. There was a kitchen here from, as far as we can tell, the earliest time, the construction of the big house. This structure is a little later. It was here by about 1830. It was in very Poor Condition when our owner, John Cummings, bought the land in 1999. It had just about fallen over. He had to right the building and rebuild. A lot of these structures were falling into the ground. Ambrose hydel who emigrated from germany, his son built the big house. It was later occupied by his son. They operated it in a partnership until 1839, at which point the widow took over. The widow ran the plantation from 1840 to 1860. So the longest period of ownership was a woman, and those were also the most profitable years. Also during the time of the largest slave population was under the ownership of a woman. The kitchen, where we are right now, is where the enslaved cook would prepare meals for the hydel family. We have records of a couple of different cooks, marie and marie joseph. Cooks would be assisted by domestics, people who lived either inside the big house or close to the big house and assisted the family. They would do things ranging from cleaning to helping the cook. Moving food, serving it in the big house for meals. The cooks day in a kitchen like this would start very early in the morning. Hearth cooking. She would build a fire in the center here, and most of the cooking was not done on the flames, but on the embers built up by the fire. The reason she would start so early, she would have to get a large supply of coal, burn lots and lots of wood, and then rake the coal on to the hearth to prepare food. We have a couple of examples of ways people prepared food on the coals. This works almost like an eye. You put a flat bottom pot here. We also have something called the spider pot, built with legs. The coals go underneath and on top as well. You can see an example here where this was constructed almost with fingers coming up to retain the coal on the top. A lot of the cooks day would be spent bent over pots like this or crouching down, trying to get close to what she was preparing. Anything we prepare today in an oven or slow cooker could be prepared in pots like this over a hearth. It creates a dutch oven. We know the food would be a cultural mix. The family was german, but this was french louisiana. We had native american ingredients, african ingredients. And if you think about the foodways of south louisiana, there is an african center. Something like gumbo, for instance, is an african food but has a european and native american vocabulary as well. But they would also be preparing any types of foods that the family had specifically requested. We have archaeological remains of cow, apparently an extraordinary amount of beef, and cow teeth. That tells us that the cook was doing everything from butchering to preparing the food. We also found turkey, freshwater drum, and turtle. This is a raised creole cottage this is the style of architecture built circa 1790. It seems to have been built into in two campaigns, or perhaps raised at a later time, but it was complete to this configuration by 1805 and had a quick renovation in the 1830s to add dormers. Other than that, it is premuch pretty much unchanged. The house was lived in by two generations of hydels, and then after slavery, a number of families lived here when it was a wage labor farm. We are going to enter through the ground floor. Any domestic slaves that worked on this plantation would come in through the back. We have made a choice to enter through the back as enslaved people would. The front is the grand vista. The back is the labor center. Enslaved people would go into a pantry to prepare food for plating and service, and then take it into the dining room. So, we are in the dining room of the whitney plantation big house. The dining room is on the ground floor, and the floor has spanish tile, which we had recreated. We did find fragments of this tile here when we were doing the restoration. This speaks to the role of the Mississippi River in these peoples lives. Enslaved people built the levees along the mississippi. All of the people enslaved along the river road were responsible for building and maintaining the levy. There was a lot of giveandtake and a lot of flooding, so some of these big houses and this may have been one of them, but we dont know some of them were originally open air on the ground floor to allow for a kind of flooding, and then later enclosed as the levees improved. This is the dining area where enslaved people would serve meals. We have furnished the big house using not any original pieces from this family because they stopped living here in 1867, but we have inventories taken at two points in the 19th century, and we used those as our guides. Insurance adjusters would go room to room and record everything down to each fork. Over here we have another pantry that would be used for service. Around the corner on the floor, there is an interesting feature which is an olive jar sunk into the floor for refrigeration. This is original. The enslaved domestics could use this to cool down food or wine. If they wanted to chill a dessert, this would be a good place to chill it before service. The oaks in the front of the house are actually not original. They are only about 50 years old, added much later. The best thing we know is, in a photograph in the 1920s, there was a fence coming up to the house and gardens coming up to the house. Which is an oldfashioned configuration. Food crafts, flowers just a real mishmash of things coming right up to the house. This house, the way it is constructed, is typical of french and caribbean design, something that is unusual for people who live in areas settled by the english. It doesnt have interior hallways or staircases. The porch would function almost like a hallway. Each room comes out onto the porch, so you could walk from one room on the end to one room on the other just on the porch. Shotgun houses, its important to note, are african in origin. And the people who built these houses were african descendents african and african descdended descended slaves who built things that were familiar to them. The Whitney House has the original murals. This is the only part we have had reconstructed. Our conservator had to redo this pattern because it was no was so deteriorated. But we have the original on the post. These are from the 1840s, a time of great sugar wealth. Thats why this is significant. Some people in the 1840s and 1850s built enormous mansions, and most of our visitors here are expecting to see Something Like tara, something they have read about or seen in movies. By comparison, these are modest houses, but they were able to make enough money, using the forced labor of africanamerican africandescended slaves, to pay someone to come out and hand paint faux marble. All of that attention to detail cost a lot of money, and that money came from the forced labor in the fields. So, we are walking into one of the large bedrooms. This has the typical furnishing of the era, mid19th century. Also, again, has more of this decorative mural work on the fireplace. You can see the pineapple motif here and the marbling on the fireplace as well. This was the family home, but enslaved people were in every room of this house performing labor. In a bedroom like this, family members might have personal servants, people who in some houses we dont know here slept on pallets on the floor next to the beds of their owners. They would perform labor like cleaning, of course, dusting, getting the clothing ready to wear, lighting the fire, getting and there is a bed warmer on the bed as well. An enslaved person would fill that with coal and then run it underneath the sheets to get the bed warm before the family got in. Enslaved people would tend to personal hygiene of their owners as well. There were chamber pots they had to empty. Everything from start to finish was done by enslaved workers including, of course, raising children. Any children raised in this house would be physically nursed and cared for by enslaved wet nurses. Enslaved nurses usually slept in the same room with the children and formed a real bond with those children. This, again, is an interesting relationship. One person is enslaved. One is the enslaver. And yet there is an intimate bond that has this division. The center salon retains a lot of the original mural work. Themost elaborate is ion ceiling. We believe the owner from 1840 to 1860 had this commissioned. Her husband had died, so we believe this may have been a commemorative piece. This room it is really difficult when we come in here to not just gawk at how beautiful it is. Theres a lot of really remarkable furniture. The decor is lovely. Most visitors imagine themselves as the people who would be relaxing in a room like this. But its important to think about the different ways this room would be used. It would be a site of relaxation for the family, but it would be a site of labor for enslaved people. One thing we draw from solomon northrups narrative that we know was common was that there were enslaved people who were skilled musicians or skilled at entertainment. They might be called upon after their work in the field was concluded to entertain the family. Solomon northrup, of course, was a skilled fiddle player. After performing hours upon hours of work picking cotton in the sun, and all he wanted was to relax in his own cabin, he had to come in and perform fiddle for dances and balls on all night long. You can understand that being forced or compelled to entertain when all you what to do is relax and be by yourself would be another form of psychological torment. In the last big bedroom, we have a statue to represent anna, the little girl who was brought from the upper south. A reminder that people lived in the big house as well. From here, we go onto the back porch. Here you can see the end of the historic murals. These patterns, by the way, come from a standard french pattern book. This is a motif that was copied from the pattern book and applied to the wall by a painter. Our conservator came out here and uncovered all of this painting. You can see the condition it was in right over here. There are a couple of spots she left that are dark. You can see how deteriorated it had been. One thing she found when she uncovered this was something that expresses a little bit of life after the civil war. You can see all of these scribbles. These are children who lived in the house after slavery ended. Some are dated. These are heights. July 14, 1984. Lillian at 10 years old. The family lived here for many eyars years after slavery ended. These are written in french as well, so thats interesting in learning about the culture here. So, after slavery ended, this plantation continued operating as a cane and rice plantation for many years. Close to the river road, we have the original plantation store. From about the 1890s. Plantation stores were another method of you could see them as a method of oppression, certainly. They were kind of like a company store. The workers would have to shop there for all of their goods. But they could charge whatever price they wanted and they could jack that up. And they would deduct that from the money they made working in the fields. Sharecropping is not common in sugar. You cannot share crop sugar. You need the whole crop. They had wage laborers. The wage laborers on this plantation lived in slave cabins. Many were former slaves or their descendents. People were living in these into the 1960s, working the same fields. We have a lot of records from the plantation store, and we are currently beginning a project to process those records and create oral histories of people who worked here in the 20th century. Those people had a different experience, but some things remained very much the same from slavery time. Oftentimes, the story of slavery and the history of African Americans in particular in this country is kind of consigned to this special Little Corner of history, African American history, and it doesnt apply to anyone else. I think in particular the story of slavery is integral to the history of the United States. You cant understand the United States without understanding slavery, certainly not today, not in 1960, not in 1900. None of these things make sense if you dont understand the forced migration of africans to this country. Thats in terms of culture and economy. I think it is important because we dont talk enough about the realities of slavery. We dont talk enough about the inequality of African Americans and what they have faced in this country. And we dont talk enough about our role today in perpetuating that inequality. Its really significant, i think, and a lot of Historic Sites address it in fits and starts. I think its important for people to come here and get a more complete understanding of slavery. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer if you like American History tv, keep up with us during the week on facebook, youtube. Nd learn about what happened this day in history and see preview clips of upcoming programs. Follow us cspanhistory. Announcer the National Constitution center in hill and philadelphia hosted a discussion on congress, Political Parties and polarization from the time of americas founding through the civil war to today. Freeman include joanne and political scientist norman orenstein. This event took place online due to the coronavirus camp pandemic, and the National Constitution center provided the video. Jeffrey now it is a great honor to introduce our guests. What an amazing panel. Americas most distinguished historians and scholars of congress to help us understand our current vexations. Edward ayres is resident