Lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us about 10 years ago by the descendants of the original founders of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship. In the sale document, which we have from the courthouse, they named their structure the anti they named their congregation the antiyoke baptist congregation. That message, being against the yoke or against slavery, is something thats important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it is really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. So we like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so we could kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after the freedom came. Whitney plantation is the only Plantation Museum in the state of louisiana that is exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people. And so this land that were on right now is historically known as habitation high dell, and our owner John Cummings purchased the property about 15 years ago and began restoring the original structures here and moving in buildings like this one, like the antiyoke church. So we had to build in build some things here, restore existing buildings and bring in historic structures. All of these things help us tell the story of slavery. So when John Cummings bought the property in 1999, we didnt have any original slave cabins. They been torn down for some 20 years, and so we had to move in those from elsewhere in louisiana. This structure, like i said, just helps us round out that story of enslavement until after the civil war. And then we have some other buildings that were here at one time and weve rebuilt. At the whitney plantation, we have a collection of statues created by an ohio artist, woodrow nash, and he built these statues for us to represent people who were enslaved at the end of slavery and then later gave their testimony to Works Progress administration in 1930s. We use the narratives of slaves taken in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on this site. And so these are to kind of give life to who these people were. In the 1930s, when the Works Projects Administration moved across the south taking the narratives of formerly enslaved people, they were talking to people in their 80s, 90s or even 100s, who when they were slaves had been just children. At highest end, maybe 15 when freedom came, but most were under the age of ten. And so this is to kind of remind us who those voices are coming from. Those people were talking about their experiences in slavery as children and oftentimes recalling the things that happened to their parents and grandparents. But this plantation was founded in 1752. It was founded by ambrose hidel, a german immigrant came in the company of john law with his family from they sailed from the port of laurient in france and came here. In 1752 when he founded this plantation, it was much smaller. It was an 11 track and he grew rice and indigo as the main cash crops. And indigo was the significant cash crop of this land in the 18th century. He and his children continued planting in indigo until the late 18th century, beginning of the 19th century. In 1795, de bora was the first louisiana planter to successfully granlate a crop of sugar in louisiana. Were in a strange climate zone so it couldnt really nobody had been able to take it the full way before that. So in 1795 with the help of somebody from haiti, who had come over after the revolution, he granulated a crop and all of the planters kind of followed suit after that. Sugar could make more money than indigo. Indigo had crop failures and there was competition in the market. So right around the same time that the first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not a viable crop any more. So this plantation transitioned at some point after that by about 1805, it was planted in sugar. And it remains planted in sugar to today. Sugar is still a gigantic industry in south louisiana. And all around us are historic cane fields still planted in cane that are now sent off to the dixie crystals and domino sugar refineries. So ambrose hidel, who started this plantation in 1752, three successef generations were in the plantation always with the labor of enslaved africans and african descendant people. Over the course of the 100 plus years that the hidels owned this land, there were many generations of people who were enslaved here. And so the population would have shifted over time with Market Forces. The highest number that we ever have recorded at one single time of enslaved people on this land is 101. But we believe that is a little low. We think there were perhaps as many as 200 people enslaved at the highest point. We have records of people that weve found 357 over the course of the 100 plus years but there are a lot of people missing from that. So where we will start introducing that population is on our first memorial where were going to begin in memorials we built to people enslaved in the state of louisiana and on this land. This is the wall of honor. And on this memorial, we have recorded the names and some basic information about 354 individuals that we have been able to find who were enslaved on this land. This memorial is it moves through time roughly chronologically. So on this side, we have people who were born in the 18th century. But were missing the entire first generation of enslaved people here. We dont know anybody anyones name who was enslaved here from the very beginning in 1752. All of these people were born after the founding of this plantation. So there is an example of people already missing. This information comes mostly from sale documents. Peoples names were not always recorded when they were enslaved. So if you look at things like the census records, it will just include a tally of how many men and how many women. But it wont tell you any names. So we have to look for those names in sale documents and in the city of new orleans there was a notary involved, and so we go to the notarial archives to find sales and purchases of people. And all of the information that we have here, this biographic information, is also related to selling. So where someone came from, how old they were, whether they came with children, the jobs that they knew how to do, these are all things that would affect their price at sale. Louisiana had different laws than other states and territories in the United States. So in louisiana for a very long time, it was illegal to sell children away from parents under the code. Before puberty, later on it was codified and it was before the age of 10. So you see things like this, this is agatha and sold with children and these are all people who are in a lot a lot being sold together. So we have basic information here. And there is really not a lot that this information could tell us but were able to tease out just a little bit. So one thing that we notice here is that all of the people, we could see that most of them were born in africa and that is listed here. Their places of origin. And yet their name,s like michelle, are european names. In this case theyre french. And in the early years we see a few spanish names as well. And so we know that these people who have these european derived names were not born in africa with those names, so that tells us something about that cultural annihilation, the way peoples culures were taken from them when they were sold in slavery in the new world. Slave traders often renamed people. And it is something that continued to happen throughout the course of slavery in the United States over the course of the 19th century when people were sold from one plantation to another. Their new owner could choose to rename them. And here in louisiana, we use the example of solomon northrup, who is the famous man sold as a slave for 12 years, 12 years a slave, and the movie made about it. The reason he was 12 years a slave in louisiana and lost is because he was never sold under the name of solomon. The first slave trader who locked him up in a pen called him plat. So he was living for 12 years as a slave in louisiana under the name of plat, and that was not his given name. An that is the experience that a lot of people had and you could see that in various narratives. Even though there is a problem of peoples names being taken away from them, there are a few people who remain here who have ampkan names. So here is a person named mingo which is an african name. And we have someone named somba and we have coacou. That means a male born on wednesday. So these are names from west africa that tell us something about the circumstances of peoples birth. And also interestingly enough, here is someone named moesa, moussa. This is an islamic name. So this person was a muslim. People traded into slavery in the americas who came from north africa were likely to have been exposed to islam through the trading with the arab world. There were long standing trade networks. So this is something that tells us a little about the religion and culture of people who came to the new world as slaves. People came from widely disparate linguistic groups. So people who came to the americas enslaved were in some cases muslim, like moussa. In some cases catholic. The kingdom of congo was officially catholic by the 1500s. And some people would bring indigenous cosmologies. Before coming into the mainland of the United States, so there was, there again, another chance for that kind of blending and synchronization with west african and caribbean religion there coming into louisiana. And it is also important to note that these people were selected by slave traders for specific skills and traits that they had. So most of the people enslaved in louisiana, about 60 were sinoganian in origin. And theyve were here for different reasons. A lot of that had to do with the crops they were familiar with growing. So the very first two slave ships that came to louisiana in 1719, the captain of those ships were under orders to go find skilled indigo growers. Because they were trying to establish an indigo economy here in louisiana and the european traders did not have the skills in planting indigo. It wasnt grown in europe. So they have to find people who already knew how to grow it and how to process it which have a complicated process and build the fields. And the same thing with rice. Skilled rice growers were brought into louisiana and South Carolina. So you find these very directed trading going along the western coast of africa, going into specific markets in the United States to fill the plantations there and create that crop wealth. So, most of the people here in these early years that we could ,from west and central africa, a few people born in the caribbean who had already been coming from long trading there. But most of the people are coming internationally. And so something that is important to note about the Movement Across the atlantic, during the time of the atlantic slave trade, is that the vast majority of settlement of the new world was african compulsory settlement. So of all of the people who crossed from the old world to the new world until 1807, four out of five came from africa. So the vast majority of movement was enslaved africans being forced on ships and across the atlantic. You and there are not really good estimates about the actual number. The best historian who has done that work is david altas and hes come at 12. 5 Million People and thats not including people who didnt make it to the coast, people who were being driven from the interior and died en route and were not able to get on the boat and come across. So that 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. This is an enormous difficunore. Now of that 12. 5 Million People, less than 5 came to the territory of United States. The vast majority into movement of Slave Society in the new world was into the caribbean and into brazil. In the United States, we outlawed the International Slave trade in 1807 which did not fully cut it off, but it significantly lowered that movement. Because people were still being pirated, smuggled into the United States. The last slave ship it is estimated arrived in the United States in 1859 or 1860. So that is just right up into the end of the civil war, people were still being snuck in. But it did cut off the majority of that trade. This is an interesting time around 1807, that at the exact same time the lands down here in the Mississippi River valley were just beginning to be developed. So the Louisiana Purchase happens 1803. 1807 you cant get any more slaves into the United States and so at the same time that people are buying up large tracks of land and really increasing their need and reliance upon the compulsory slave labor. They didnt have a supply of enslaved people coming from africa. And so we could see this changes the culture here. And what happened is that a very robust domestic slave trade developed in the wake of that. And so we could see this happening on our wall here where you could already see them sort of trickling in. Theres a few people born on whats called the east coast, instead of in the old world or in the caribbean. And on the reverse side of the wall, youll see a large collection of them. So here all of a sudden, all of these people are listed east coast. East coast is probably virginia. And you could see that they came from an english owned planation by their names. Edwin, perry, claim, jack, tom, sam. These are all english names. So they no longer have french or spanish names, not seeing as many african names. You see a lot of people coming from englishowned plantations. So the domestic slave trade was an enormous movement of people across this country. So in total from after the conclusion of the International Slave trade in 1807, 1 Million People were moved from the upper south, and the upper south is virginia, maryland, tennessee, north carolina, South Carolina a little bit, but mostly centered in virginia and north carolina. And 1 Million People were moved down the river to louisiana, alabama, mississippi. Where there was large scale plantations. So to give you an idea of the difference in labor there, i come from north carolina, a lot of our plantations that we had in north carolina, tobacco plantations, tobacco is really awful for the soil. And the fields have to lay fallow for a very long time to recover after growing tobacco. So it cuts down on the amount of land that they could work. And also they needed smaller scale labor. So they didnt a lot of the plantations there, they had 25, 50 slaves. Here in louisiana, we had 101 on this plantation and that is on the smaller end. Just very close by. In a nearby house there was a slave labor force of 750 enslaved people. So there was a greater need here for largescale labor. And in the upper south, they had a Larger Population of women. They were encouraging family units and family growth. Part of the value of an enslaved woman was her reproductive potential. And enslavers talked about this by using the word increase. So if a woman were to be given to another Family Member, say in a will, they would give sally and her increase, sally and all of the potential children that she could have for ever, and her childrens children, all of that reproductive potential belonged to that person who owned that woman. And so there was a great value in encouraging the growth of families because they could make exponentially more money on selling off those children. So the majority of people who came down from the upper south were in their late teens to early 20s, in the prime of their working life and they would be born and raised on plantations in the upper south and most marched over land. Most of that movement was over lan. Some of it was on a riverboat coming down the mississippi. Some of it was on boats coming down the atlantic seaboard and into the gulf of mexico from there. But new orleans was the heart of that trade. So new orleans was tied to virginia and to alexandria, virginia, and there was this constant flow of people coming down to new orleans to be spread out to the territories from there. So this is where you could see all of that happening. On this plantation we have an oral history given to us by the descendants of one of the people enslaved here that described this process of being taken from the upper south and sold in the lower south. Anna is a girl who was born on the east coast, probably virginia, and the story about anna is that she was purchased for this plantation to be a gift for the lady of the house, maria heidel, who had no children of her own. Anna, as the family has related to us, lived inside of the big house. And so would have had a interesting kind of relationship with the family. People who lived in the big house, who were slaves, often had a strange kind of relationship that 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 as well. And the reason why that is significant is because of her son, victor heidel. Victor heidel was born in about the year 1835 when anna was a young woman. So annas mistress had a brother antoine, who impregnated anna. We dont know this is so long ago. We dont know if anna was raped by antwaan or if they had a relationship but for enslaved women there was no such thing as consent because they didnt own their bodies. So victor was born of a heidel Family Member and enslaved woman listed on her documents an american, mixed race woman. And so victor would have been considered here in louisiana what they call a quadroon. One quarter african descendant and three quarters european descendant and enslaved by his own family. This is one instance that we know of for certain of all of the 354 people, over 100 years of ownership of the heidel family, there were many more people born of enslaved mother and white heidel fathers. This was common throughout the south. And those children born of those enslaved woman belonged to their own family and would not necessarily be treated any better, and in many cases you could read in narratives of where those children would be treated a little bit worse because usually there was a white wife somewhere in there who understood where those children were coming from. So the separations between enslaved people and enslavers were not really there. There was a lot of mixing in terms of sexual assault, in terms of actual relationships, certainly here in louisiana, a lot of free people of color existed here because of consensual relationships, where enslaved women would then be freed and given their own property. So in louisiana, it is a very different class that is kind of created here. Free people of color and people enslaved by their own families as well. This is called the gwendolyn mid low hall, and in this memorial we have transcribed the names of 107,000 people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana. Through the year 1820. This is based on a data base that Gwendolyn Midlo hall put together and it ended in 1820. There is talk of extending it to 1865. But 107,000 people aren scribed here. We have just first names and mostly coming from sale documents. And then what weve also done here is recorded little snippets from the Works Progress administration slave narratives. So in this area we allow people to walk through on their own and take a few minutes to reflect and read the names and their testimonials. This is the last memorial that we visit before we move into the historic grounds of the plantation. This is called the field of angels. And we put this memorial here for 2,200 children who died enslaved in saint john the baptist parish. Thats the parish were in by the whitney plantation. It is centered by a sculpture by rob moorhead from mississippi and this is called coming home. And so we have along the walls here the names, date of death, ages and names of the mother of all of the children who died. And these are recorded in the church records. So our historian did the research in pulling those records out of church and recording them here. So here is a large collection of people that are not listed with any name whatsoever. These are all people that are just listed as little slave, negro slave girl, negro slave boy. Some of these people, who have no names, were perhaps too young. They died too young to be named. But sometimes we see this notation when people were 2 years old or 3 years old, who definitely had names but even at death were just when they were born, they were born into a lower class, of course, as enslaved people. It was not seen as important enough to record the names they had or to look into it and find out what their name was in life. So the whitney plantation was for the longest amount of time was a sugar plantation. Today our sugar fields come up to the edge of where we interpret. And historically, the land had a sugar mill on the site. So the people who were enslaved on this land worked in the fields, and probably the majority of them would have been occupied in sugar. So they worked in the fields. They also worked as domestics, as herdsman. This is kind of like a little village. All of the jobs that needed to sustain this group of 100 plus people were done here. They made all of the food here. They grew the food here. And also worked on textiles and things like that. Carpenters and the like. Sugar processing happens in the at the end of the year. So the growing season here, currently it is early october, sugar is still very much growing and it will continue to grow until late october or early november. The goal with sugar is to have everything processed and done by christmastime. So Christmas Day they want the entire field done and granulated. These kettles were used in the granulation of sugar. We brought these kettles in from other places. But historically at our sugar mill there would have been eight kettles like this. And they would go from large down to small. You could see that this has a lip on it. So these would be sitting in a brick structure, and then open on the bottom where there could be a fire underneath. So the goal with these kettles is to take ground down sugar stocks, they would grind all of the cane, using animal power and then using a steam engine later on they had a steam engine. They would take the juice that comes out of the sugar cane and boil it into these giant kettles. These would have to be tended. This is a 24hour a day process for about one month. And the people who worked in making sure would be standing next to kettles like this using long handles ladles and physically scooping the juice from one kettle to the next to the next, to the next, to the next and then putting it in cooling pans where it would granlate granulate. This is as you imagine is a hot and dangerous process. Theyre boiling sugar sap. It is sticky. So not only would it get crusty and attach to the bottom there and burn which made an inferior product but it could burn the people making the sugar so it was dangerous in that way. And they worked in shifts, 24 hours a day. The thing that makes sugar difficult and kind of unique in the cash crops grown in the new world is that it had to be processed as soon as it was cut. So they couldnt, in other words, just cut it and sit on it for a little while and process it later. As soon as it is cut, it starts to die and it couldnt make good sugar. So that is why that harvesting season or grinding season was extremely grueling and all of the physical labor done outside was also done in a very, very cold time of the year. South louisiana does get bitterly cold, humid cold in november and december. And enslaved workers would be working outside constantly in that. The whitney plantation does not have original slave cabins. All of them were torn down by the 1970s. But the end of the civil war, there were 22 slave cabins on this site. And they looked about like this. So this is pretty typical. It is essentially a duplex. It would be family on each side or if not a real family, a fiktive family. It was common in labor to form these bonds. The slave cabins on this site were arranged the way that weve brought these in. So we have there could be two rows facing each other with a central courtyard in the center. And so you could imagine that would have created a kind of a community there. And these were also set back from the plantation big house by about a half a mile. So there was some physical distance between where the becoming a maroon for a night. Since families tended to be separated, and that wasnt a Long Distance. If a husband and wife are on neighboring plantations, they might be away from two or three miles and running away for miles to come and see a loved one and come back before dawn is something that was extremely common. But that was all done with a certain degree of risk. If they left and were caught off, even if they intended to come back, they would be considered a runaway and could be punished for that. Enslaved people would be in the cabins mostly at night. Their work days stretched from what they said was cant see to cant see. So in other words, from dawn until dusk they would be out at jobs and come back to the cabins at nighttime. Nighttime at the cabins would be a time for communion with people there, their families, like we said, the fiktive families and also food preparation. Enslaved people were given rations by the slave owners. Typically the most common were corn meal and bacon. Bacon would be essentially fatback, pork belly, lots of fat. Not at nutritious cut. Not considered really the high cut, the good cut that the family would be eating. They would also receive things like intestines, like pig feet. These are all things that have been sustained for a very long time and in southern cooking. But have their roots in those kind of lower cuts that were given to enslaved people during slavery times. Also very common in terms of the food ways of enslaved people are things that are originated in africa. Black eyed peas, watermelon came to the new world with enslaved people okra, which was important here in louisiana for making gumbo. And so people brought with them their african food ways and supplemented it the best way they could with the ingredients they have here. People cooked in their cabins. There were usually five places in the cabins where they could prepare meals. But in a place like south louisiana where it is very hot, a lot of time we imagine they would be preparing almost like a campfire outside so they dont have the smoke and heat inside of their cabins. The furnishings in cabins were varied across time and space. And all of these things are going to be different on different plantations. Way people were treated was different from plantation to plantation and also different regionally as well. What we have represented here are a few things that you could read about in slave narratives. When people talk about the types of furnishings that they have. A rope bed like this is common and this is planks with rope as attached. What we have here is weve shown so that you can see, we have a rough kind of fabric with hay in the middle so you can see how thats constructed. In louisiana it was common to use moss, spanish moss for stuffing for a bed. Another thing that people did if they didnt have a bed, people talked about just making a pallet on the floor and that is something that a lot of people experienced at different plantations. In fact Solomon Northup never described sleeping in a bed for the full 12 years. He slept on a pallet on the floor. So again people would be treated differently at different places. Beds like that, this thwould be a bed for an entire family. Children, mom and dad and altogether would all share space. And there is not a lot of space in the cabin so there isnt much of a sense of privacy, what would we think of being appropriate in a family and being private. All of that living was done in just a couple of rooms, everybody together. This is an 1868 jail that we brought in from gonzalez, louisiana. 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 could 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. And you could see there are a few photographs of pens that were in the back of auction houses that are very similar in design to this. So typically in an auction house like Say Something you would find in the city of new orleans, there could be a front room where the auction would take place and then in the back a small courtyard with a row of cells and enclosed in a court yard so 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 city of new orleans, and the Central Business district, there were two dozen slave jails at one time. Additionally enslaved people were locked up at the state penitentiary as well. So all of the same rules applied to enslaved people if they were convicted of murder or theft or any of the other infractions. They could be locked up just the way that a free person could. But, of course, a lot of the punishment of enslaved people was done in an extra legal fashion on the plantations. Plantations did also have jaillike structures sometimes. Where people could be confined as punishment. But typically they were not iron structures like this. They might be made of wood or brick or people might be just confined say in a barn or an extra room somewhere. But those that kind of confinement was very typical. A lot of people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana would at one time or another experience being sold at an auction. Especially since so many people who were enslaved in the lower south had come from the upper south. So they were sold off of a plantation and purchased by a slave trader and brought down 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 elucidates the Market Forces behind enslavement. This is not a southern institution. Raw goods producing in the south supplied the northern and foreign factories, but also the slave trade itself involved people like Insurance Agents like Mortgage Brokers and bankers. There was a lot of industry, northern and southern involved in that. So to kind of give you an example there, if a slave trader working out of virginia and new orleans, and here that would be the biggest one was isaac franklin, if he purchased an enslaved person off of a plantation in the upper south, he would sometimes pay full cash value for them up there. But it would be a wholesale rate, so you could see how people were commodity, they were paid as a wholesale in the upper south. If he did not have the full amount, he could put a mortgage on that person. Then they would be ensured for the time they were transited down to the lower south. He would cover all of the expenses of moving them to the lower south and then sell them at a retail rate, about 100 more than what he bought them for in the upper south. If he had a note, a mortgage on that person, he would pay off that mortgage and pocket the profit. So the same way we commodify houses and cars and live stocks, these are the same forces that were used for human beings during enslavement. All of this is calculated. But on the ground floor, on the actual on the human side of it is separation from loved ones, when people were being locked up in pens similar to this, they might be with their family and about to be sold away from their family or theyre just traveled Long Distance away from everything theyve ever known and all of that is being done with a price tag. People who were locked up in slave pens had to wait for long periods of time for the market to be at an 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 slow, slave traders would wait and keep them locked up in a jail or in the boat that they had come on and 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 here in louisiana, a good rate that you see pretty commonly is about 900 to 1,000 for somebody who was skilled, that might go up to 1500. And there is another seedy under belly of the slave trade called fancy trade. Fancy girls, seen as beautiful who might be used as concubines or sex slaves could be sold at 1,500 or 2,000 and were talking about 19th century money. So when you translate it to today, it is an enormous amount of money that people were spending on those individuals. This area that were standing in now is the whitney plantation historic district. This is where we have the highest concentration of original structures, all centered around the 1790 big house. Over here we have the original site of the kitchen. And there was a kitchen here from as far as we could tell the earliest time, the construction of this big house. This structure is a little bit later. It was here by about 1830. And it was in very Poor Condition when our owner John Cummings bought in the land in 1999. It was just about falling over. So he had to right the building and rebuild the hearth entirely and a lot of the structures were really just falling apart into the ground. So ambrose heidel, who immigrated from germany and founded the plantation in 1752, his son, john jacques heidel, built this big house, and then later was opened by jean jacques sons. They operated it in a partnership until 17 or excuse me until 1839 at which point the widow took over. The widow ran the plantation from 1840 to 1860. So really the longest period of ownership was a woman. And those were also during the most profitable years. And also during the time of the greatest 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 heidel family. And we have record of a couple of cooks that were listed on different inventories. Marie and marie joseph. They would be assisted by domestics, people who lived inside or close to the big house and assisted the family and they would do things ranging from cleaning inside of the big house to helping out the cook and 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 because all of the preparing of food, all of the cooking was actually done on the hearth. This is call hearth cooking. So she would build a fire in the center here, and most of her cooking is again not done on the the flames but done on the embers that are built up by the fire. So the reason that she would have to start so early is that she would have to get a large supply of coals by burning lots and lots of wood and raking the coals from the hearth to prepare food on the coals. This works almost like an eye and you put a flat bottom pot there but we also have something called a spider pot and it is built with legs. You so the coals go underneath. Then there would be a top here to retain that heat and then the coals would go on top of the pot as well. You could see a good example of this right here where this is constructed with almost like fingers coming up. So those could retain all of the coals on the top. So a lot of the cooks day in preparing the various food that the family wanted to eat would be spent bent over pots like this or crouching down trying to get close to what she was preparing. Anything that we prepare today say in a slow cooker, or in an oven could be prepared in pots like this over a hearth. It basically creates like a dutch oven. And so we know that the food that they were eating here would be kind of a cultural mix. The family was german descended but this was french louisiana. We have native american and anxious allege glueofi didofi see african ingredients. If you think about the food of south louisiana, there is an african center, like gumbo is an african food but its kind of european and native american as well. But they would also be preparing any types of food that the family had requested and we have archeological remains here of cow, apparently an extraordinary amount of beef, and there were cow teeth found on the site so the cook was doing everything from butchering all the way to preparing the food. We also found remains of turkey, freshwater drum, turtle, pork, and the freshwater drum and the turtle are particularly interesting because, again, those are expressive of food ways in south louisiana. So this is a raised creole cottage. This is the style of architecture built circa 1790. It seems to have built in two campaigns or perhaps raised at a later time. But it was complete to this configuration by 1805 and then just briefly a quick renovation in the 1830s to add dormers. But other than that, it remains pretty much unchanged. So the house was lived in by three or excuse me two generations of heidels. Then after slavery, a number of different families lived here when it was operated as a wage labor farm, free labor farm. So were going to enter into the ground floor. Any domestic slaves that worked on there plantation would come into this house through the back. So weve made a choice to enter the house through the back as enslaved people would enter it. The front of the house is where you would get the grand vista. But the back is more the labor center. So there would be a path that cut all the way from the kitchen to the back, and enslaved people would go into a pantry over here to prepare the food for plating and service and 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. And this kind of speaks to the role of the Mississippi River in these peoples lives. Enslaved people built the levees along the mississippi. Were set back from the hip river not terribly far. So all of the people who were enslaved on the particular plantations along the river road were responsible for building the levee, maintaining the levee right in front of that place. And there was a lot of give and take and flooding so some of the big houses and this may have been one of them but we dont know, some of them were open air on the ground floor to allow for kind of flooding. And then later enclosed as the levees improved. So this is the dining area where enslaved people would serve meals. We have furnished this big house using not any original pieces from the family because they stopped living here in 1867 but we have inventories taken as two points in the 19th century and weve used those as our guide. Basically like an insurance adjustor preparing for sale. They would walk room to room and record everything down to each individual fork. Over to the side we have another pantry that would be used for service. And around the corner on the the floor there is an interesting feature which is an olive jar sunk into the floor for refrigeration, and this is original. So the the enslaved domestics who lived here could use it to cool down fad or wine they wanted to serve. If they were serving a chilled desert, that would help it chill before service. The oaks in the front of the house are actually not that old. Theyre only about 50 years old. Added much later. And the best thing that we know is that in a photograph in the 1920s, there was a fence coming up close to the house, and there were gardens coming right up against the front of the house. Which is really kind of an oldfashioned configuration for landscape design. So that would be food crops or flowers but just a real mishmash of things grown right up against the house. This house, the way it is constructed, is typical of french design, french and caribbean. Something that is a little bit unusual for people who live in areas settled by the english is that it does not have interior hallways or staircases. However the porch would function 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 coming just on the porch. Shotgun houses it is also important to note are african in origin. And the people who built these houses were of course africa and african descended slaves building things that were familiar to them. Something that is really significant about the whitney big house is the original murals which are here. This is the only part that we have had reconstructed. Our conservator had to redo the pattern because it was so deteriorated. However, we do have the original on the posts here. And these are from the 1840s. This is from a time of great sugar wealth, and so that is why this is significant. Some people in the 1840s, 1850s, built enormous mansions. And most of our visitors here are expecting to see Something Like tara, something that theyve read about or seen in movies. And by comparison, these are pretty modest houses. But they were able to make enough money using the forced labor of african descended slaves to pay someone to come out and hand paint faux marble on their baseboards, fireplaces, outside walls, on these posts. All of this attention to detail, all of that cost a lot of money. And that money came from that forced labor in the fields. So were walking into one of the large bedrooms. And this has typical furnishing of the era. Mid 19th century. And also, again, has more of this decorative mural work on the fireplace. And you could see the pineapple motif here and also the marbling paint on the fireplace as well. This was the family home, the heidel familys home. But enslaved people were in every room of this house performing labor. In a bedroom like this, the heidel family might have personal servants. People who sometimes in some houses, we dont know here, but they slept on pallets on the floor next to the bed of their owners. They would perform labor in this room like cleaning, dusting, getting all of the clothing ready for people to wear. Lighting the fire. And we have a bed warmer on the bed as well. So in the winter time, enslaved domestics would fill a bed warmer like that with coals and then run it underneath the sheets to get the bed warm before the family got in. Of course, also enslaved people would be tending to the personal hygiene of their owners as well. There were chamber pots they had to empty out. Everything start to finish was done by enslaved workers, including, of course, raising children. So any children who were raised in this house, any heidel children, would be physically nursed and cared for by enslaved wet nurses. So enslaved nurses usually slept in the same room as the children and formed a real bond with those children. This, again, is a really interesting kind of relationship where one person is enslaved and one person is the enslaver, and yet there is an intimate bond there that has this division right in the middle. The center salon also retains a lot of that original mural work. The most elaborate is on the ceiling. We believe that as marie heidel had the work commissioned. She was the owner from 1840 to 1860. Her husband died in 1839. We believe this may have been a commemorative piece. This room, its really difficult when we come in here not to just sort of gawk at how beautiful it is. Theres a the lo of remarkable furniture. The decor is quite lovely. Most visitors imagine themselves as the people who would be relaxerelax relaxing. They think wouldnt it be nice to relax in this. It would be a site of relaxation for the heidel family but it would be a site of labor for the enslaved people. One thing we draw from solomon northrops narrative we know was common, if there were enslaved people who were skilled musicians or skilled in any form of entertainment, they might be called upon after their work in the field had concluded to entertain the family. Solomon norths up was a skilled fiddle player. After hours of picking cotton in the sun, all he wanted to do was relax in his own cabin, he had to come into the house or be rented out to other fiddle for dances and balls all night long. He was able to make a little bit of money there but you can understand that being forced or compelled to entertain when all you want to do is relax and be by yourself would be another form of psychological torment for enslaved people. In the last big bedroom here, we have a statue to represent anna, the little girl who was brought from the upper south, and just as a reminder that these people lived inside the big house as well. Well go from here out onto the back porch. Here you can see the end of those historic murals. These patterns by the way come from a standard pattern book, a french pattern book. So this is a motif that was copied from a pattern book and applied to the wall by this painter. His name was domenechy conova. Our conserve ator came out here and you can see the condition of a couple spots that are dark so you can see how deteriorated it had been. One thing thats interesting that she found when she uncovered this is something that is expressing a little bit of life after the civil war. You can see all of these scribbles. These are children who lived in this house after slavery ended and some of them are dated. These are heights, so here we have it says 14th of july 1894. Lillian at 10 years old right here. The tussan family lived here for many years after slavery ended, and these are written in french as well so thats also interesting in learning about the culture here. So after slavery ended, this plantation continued operating as a cane and rice plantation for many, many years. In the front of the house close to the river road, we have the original plantation store from about the 1890s. Plantation stores were another method of well, you can see them as a method of oppression certainly in these types of labor forms. These plantations would build stores. Its kind of like a company store. You hear about that in the north too, a company store, where the workers would have to shop there for all of their goods and they could charge whatever they wanted and they would jack that up and they would deduct that from the money they would make working in the fields. You cant share crop sugar. You need the all crop. You cant just grow this amount and get anything from it. The wage laborers would live in the slave cabins. Many would be descendants. They lived in the cabins until the 1960s and worked in the same feels fields. We have a lot of records from the plantation store and were currently beginning on a project to start processing those records and start doing oral histories with people who worked here in the 20th century who had a whole different experience but some things stayed very much the same as they had been during slavery times. Oftentimes the story of slavery and the history of africanamericans in particular in this country is kind of consigned to the special Little Corner of history where its africanAmerican History and it doesnt apply to anyone else, and i think that 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 1960s, not in 1900. None of these forces of history make sense if you dont understand the forced migration of africans into this country and thats in terms of culture and thats in terms of economy as well. I think that this place is important because we dont talk enough about the realities of slavery. We dont talk enough about the in equality of africanamericans and what they have faced in this country and we dont talk enough about our role today in kind of perpetuating that inequality. So its really, really significant i think and also a lot of Historic Sites kind of address it in fits and starts and i think its important for people to come here and get a more complete understanding of slavery. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3 created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, oral histories with foot soldiers from the 1960s Civil Rights Movement beginning with gloria grinel who talks about participating in the 1960s lunch counter sitin protests during her time as a student at richmonds Virginia Union university. She also describes the Culture Shock she experienced as a californian attending college in virginia. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspa cspan3. Thomas jefferson interpreter bill barker and brandon dill ladillard discuss how jeffersons life changed over the decades. The conversation draws on mr. Markers career at independence hall, colonial williamsburg, and monticello. Thomas Jeffersons Monticello recorded this program and provided the video. Good afternoon. My name is is Brandon Dillard and im the manager of historic interpretation here at monticel monticello. You might recognize my voice because in previous livestreams im usually the guy behind the camera and im reading questions from our audience