Hi, my name is ashley rogers, im the director of Museum Operations at the whitney plantation and were beginning our today in a historic freedmans church which was built circa 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us by the descendants of the founders of the congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land for the purpose of building a house of worship and in the sale document which we have from the courthouse they named their congregation the antiyoke, or against slavery is 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 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 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 traveled 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 thoopd 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 lawrence, 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 grow a crop of sugar. 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 and 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 youll 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. There are places of origin. And yet their names 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. An 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. He was called 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, there are a few people who remain here who have african names. So here is a person named mingo which is an african name. And we have someone named somba and we have quaco and that means a male born on a 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, this is an islamic name so they were 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 it tells us a little bit about the religion and culture who came to the new world as slaves. People came from widely desperate linguistic groups so those who came to merken slaved were some cases muslim and some cases catholic, the kingdom of congo was catholic by the 1500s and some people would bring indigenous cosmoloy and before coming into the main land of the United States and 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 have. About 60 of those were sinna gam been 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 see were coming as we said 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. And theyre not 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 not including people who didnt make it to the coast. People who were being driven from the interior and dined on route and then were not even able to get on the boat and come across. So that 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. And this is an enormous dais poria. 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 the trade and this is an interesting time around 1807, that at the exact same time the lands down here in the Mississippi River valley and 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. A few people born on what is 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 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 and a lot of people from english owned 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 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 potential belonged to the 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 and some of it was on a river boat 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 to be a gift for the lady of the house, mary hidel, 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 hidel. Victor hidel was born in about the year 1835 when anna was a young woman. So annas mistress had a brother who impregnated anna and this is so long ago we dont know if anna was raped by antwan or if they have a relationship but for enslaved women there was no such thing as consent because they did not own their bodies. So victimor was born of a hidel 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 quad roon. 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 hidel family, there were many more people born of enslaved mother and white hidel fathers and this is 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 woman would 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 e 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 min low 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 thur 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. 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 now 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 and not important enough to record the names or to look out for 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 granule ate. 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 things 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. And it is essentially a dupe flex. It would be family on each side or if not a real family, a fiktive family. 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 about about half a mile. So there was some physical distance between where the hidel family lived and where the enslaved workers lived. And that dance is important in creating some kind of a sense of autonomy, although their movements were still controlled. People could not leave the plantation without a pass and over seer would monitor them at all stages of the day to make sure they got up at the right time and at work at the right time and back at the cabins at the right time. That said, because of the distance and there is so much space here, there are a lot of plantations out here on the river road, something that was very common in particular in this region and other regions as well was something that they called petite marnage. Running away 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 extremely common but that was all done with a certain degree of risk because if they left and were caught off, even if they intended to be 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 night time. Night time would be a time for communion, the families or we said the fiktive families and also food preparation. Enslaved people were rations by the plantation owner and typically the most common thing that you could read about are cornmeal and bacon. Bacon would be essentially pork belly, a lot of fat, not a nutritious cut and not considered 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, water melon came to the new world with enslaved people and okra which is important here 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 and then what we have here is weve shown so that you could see, we have this rough kind of fabric with hay in the middle so you could see how that is constructed. In louisiana it was also 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 p 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. 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 shows the Market Forces hindbehind 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, woe 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 and then he could put a mortgage on that person and then they would be ensured for the time that they were being transited down to the lower south and he would cover all of the expenses of moving them down to the lower south and then sell them here at a retail rate. About 100 more than what he bought them for from the upper south. If he had a note, a mortgage on that person, he would pay off that mortgage and pocket the profit. And so the same way that we come oddfy houses and cars and livestock, these are the samefort forces that were the commodity of enslaved and that is all transacted in this calculated way. 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 nobody and a known and all of that is being done with a price tag. People 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 mashes to improve to 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 and to someone skilled that might go up to 1,500. And there is another seedy underbelly called fancy trade. Fancy girls, seen as beautiful who might be used as con cubines 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 and that is where we have the highest amount 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 the 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 following into the ground. And ambrose hidel who founded this plantation in 1752. His son john jacques hidel built this big house and then later was occupied by jean jacquess sons. They operated it in a partnership until 17 or excuse me until 1839 at which point marcellins wizzy took over and the widow ran the plantation from 1840 to 1860. So 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 hidel family. And we have record of a couple of cooks that were listed on different ventilators. Mary and mary 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 so we have a couple of examples of ways that people prepared 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. So the coles go underneath and 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 is french louisiana and we have native american and afric african ingredients and if you think about the food of south louisiana, there is an african center, like gumbo is an african food but it this kind of european and native american vocabulary in it 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 built circa 1790. It was build 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 hidels and 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 peemt wou enslaved people would enter it. But the front is the vista. So there could be a path that cut 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 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. And this kind of speaks to the role of the Mississippi River in these peoples lives. Enslaved people built the levees upon the mississippi and so all of the people who were enslaved on the particular plantation as long the river road were ponl for builting the levee 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 othriginal pieces from the family because they stopped living here in 1867 but we have inventories taken as two points and we used those as our guide. 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 slaves could use this to cool down food or wine or things like that this that he wanted to serve if they are preparing a chilled dessert, this is a good place to 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 landsca Landscape Design so that is 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 on to 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 to 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 m. A. S. H. Marble on baseboards on fireplaces, on the outside walls an the posts and all of the 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. This was the family home, the hidel familys home but enslaved people were in every room of this house performing labor. In a bedroom like there, the hidel Family Members might have personal servants, people who sometimes in some houses 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 personnel iejine of of their ow. There were chamber pots in here that enslaved domestics had to empty out. So everything from start to finish was done by enslaved workers. Including, of course, raisin children. Any 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 p yet there is an intimate bond that has this division her husband had died in 1839, so we believe this may have been a commemorative piece. This room, its really difficult when we come in not to just sort of gawk at how beautiful it is theres a lot of remarkable furniture. The decor is quite lovely. Most visitors think wouldnt it be nice to rae lacks in a room like this . But it would be a site of relaxation for the family, bud again a site of labor no the enslaved people. One thing that we draw from the narrative is if there were enslaved people who are skilled musicians or skilled in any form of entertainment, they might be called upon to entertain the family. After hours of picking cotton, all he wanted to do is relax, he had to come into the house or perform fiddle for dances all night long. You can understand being forced or compelled to entertain when all you want to do is relax and be by yourself was also another form of psychological torment for enslaved people. In the last big bedroom here, we have a statue to represent anna, a little girl brought from the upper south. Just a reminder these people lived in the big house as well. Well go from here out onto the back porches these patterns, by the way. Come from a standard pattern book, a french pattern book. This is a motif that was copied from a pattern book and applied to the wall by this painter. His name was domenici canova, you can see the condition it was in right over here. Theres a couple spots she left that are dark, so you can see how deteriorated it had been. One interesting thing she found when she uncovered this is something thats expressive a bit of life after the civil wars. You can see all these scribbles. These are children who lived in this house after slavery ended. Some of them are dated. These are heights. So here we, it says 14th of july 1894. Lillian at 10 years old right hyer, the toussan family lived here for many years. These are also written in french as well, so thats interesting in learning about the culture here. This plant aches continued operating as a cane and rice plantation for many, 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 type of labor forms. Its kind of like a company store. You hear about that in the north, too, where they would have the workers would have to shop there for all of their goods, but they could charge whatever price they wanted, they would jack it up and deduct that from the money working in the fields. Sharecropping is not common in sug sugar. So they had wage laborers. The wage laborers would live in the same slave cabins. Many of them would be the former slaves themselves or their descendants. People lived here until the 1960s, working the same fields. We have a lot of records from the plantation store and were currently beginning on a project to start processing the records and 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 around can americans is consigned to a special corner, 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 understand slavery. Certainty not today, not in 1960, not in 1900, none of these sources dont make sense unless you understand the forced migration to this country. I think that this place is important, because we dont talk enough about the realities of slavery. We dont talk enough about the inequality of africanamericans and what they have faced in this country. We dont talk enough about our role today in kind of perpetuating that inequality. Its really, really significant, i think. Also a lot of Historic Sites address it in fits and starts. I think its important for people to come here and get a more completes understanding of slavery. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas capable Television Companies as a pib service, brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month were featuring America History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight oral history with foot soldiers from the 1960s civil rights mofl, beginning with gloria grinnell, who talks about the lunch counter protests during her time at Richmond Virginia union university. She also describes the Culture Shock she experienced as a californian attending college in virginia. Watch tonight. Enjoy America History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Bill barker and brandon dillard, monticellos he manager the conversation is driven by viewer questions and draws on mr. Barkerss career on independence hall. Thomas jeffersons monticello