We are beginning our tour today in a historic friedmans church built circa 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in paulino, louisiana. This structure was donated to us about ten years ago but i descendants of the original founders of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870, 2 parcels of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship, and in the sale document which we have from the courthouse, they named their structure the anti they named their congregation the antiyoked baptist congregation. That message of being against the yoke or against slavery is something thats important to our story here and a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river. Its 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 at the whitney plantation here in this building so we can kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after freedom came. The whitney plantation is the only museum in the state of louisiana thats exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people and so this land that were on right now was historically known as habitation hidel and our owner, John Cummings, purchased the property about 15 years ago and began restoring it, restoring the original structures that were here and moving in buildings like this one like the antiyoke church. We had to build some things here. Restore existing buildings. And bring in historic structures. All of these things help us tell the story ofhen John Cummings be property in 1999 we didnt have original slave cabins. Theyd been torn down for some 20 year so we had to move in those from elsewhere in louisiana. This stricture like i said helped us round out enslavement in the civil war. We have other buildings that were here at one time and rebuilt. At the whitney plantation, we have a collection of statues created by an ohio artist, woodrow nash. He put together these statues for us to represent people enslaved at the end of slavery and later gave their testimony to the Works Progress administration in 1930s. We use the narratives of slaves taken in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on this site. And these are to kind of give life to who the people were. In the 1930s when the work Progress Administration traveled across the south taking the narratives of formerly enslaved people, they were talking to people who were their 80s, 90s or even 100s who when they were slaves had been just children. You know, at the highest end, maybe 15 when they when freedom came. But most of them were under the age of 10 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 their grandparents. This plantation was initially founded in 1752. It was founded by a german immigrant. He came in the company of john law with his family from sail from the port of laurient in france and came here. In 1752 when he founded this plantation, it was much smaller. It was an 11arpent tract. He grew rice and indigo principally as the main cash crops. Indigo was really 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, etiene dibore was the first louisiana planter to successfully cultivate sugar in louisiana. Were in a strange climate zone so it couldnt really nobody had been able to really 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 a whole lot more money than indigo could. Indigo had had crop failures and there was competition in the market so right around the same time that that first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not really a viable crop anymore. 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 ambroise hidel who started the plantation in 1762, three generations of hidels ran the plantation always with the labor of enslaved africans and african descendant people. Over the course of the hundredplus years that the hidels owned this land, there were many successive generations of people who were enslaved here. And so the population would have shifted over time with Market Forces. The highest number we ever have recorded at one single time of enslaved people in this land is 101 but we believe thats a little low. We think there were, perhaps, as many as 200 people enslaved at the highest point. We have record, people that we found, 357 over the course of the hundredplus years but there will be a lot of people missing from that. Where well start introducing that population is on our first memorial. Were going to begin in some memorials that we built to people enslaved in the state of louisiana and enslaved on this land. This is the wall of honor. We recorded name the and basic information about 354 individuals weve been able to find who were enslaved on this land. This memorial moves through time roughly chronologically. On this side we people who were born in the 18th century but were missing the entire first generation of enslaved people here. We dont know 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 theres an example of some people that were already missing. This information comes mostly from sale documents pf peoples names were not always recorded when they were enslaved so if you look at things like the census record, it will just include a tally of how many men and how many women. It wont actually tell you any names. We have to look for those names in sale documents, in the city of new orleans, there was a notary involved so we go to the notarial archives to find sales and purchases of people. All 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 before puberty. Later on it was codified, actually before the age of 10. You see things like this. Heres agatha. Shes being sold with these children and these are all people who are in a lot a lot being sold together. So we have basic information here and theres 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 these people, we can see that most of them were born in africa and thats listed here. Places of origin. And yet, their names like michelle, are european names. This case, theyre french. We also see in the early years a few spanish names as well. And so we know that these people who have these europeanderived names were not born in africa with those names so that tells us something about that cultural annihilation. The way peoples cultures were taken from them when they were sold into slavery in the new world. Slave traders often renamed people. Its something that continued to happen throughout slavery in the United States over the course of the 19th century. People were sold from one plantation to another. Their new owner could choose to rename them. Here in louisiana we use the example of solomon northop, the very famous man sold as a slave for 12 year. 12 years a slave his book and later a movie made just recently about it. The reason he was 12 years a slave in louisiana, he was never sold under the name of solomon. The first slave trader who locked him up in a pen called him platt. He was living for 12 years under the name of platt, not his given name. Thats an experience a lot of people had. You can see that written in various narratives. Even though theres this problem of peoples names being taken away in them, there are a few people who remain here who have african names. So here is a person named mingo which is an african name. We also have someone named samba and we have quaku, means a male born on a wednesday. These are cultural names from west africa that tell us something about the circumstances of those peoples birth. And also interestingly enough heres heres someone named mosa, this is an islamic name. 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 trade networks. This tells us about the religion and culture of people who came to the new world as slaves. People came from widely disparate etno, linguistic, religious groups. 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 already by the 1500s. Some people would have been bringing their indigenous cosmologies. Louisiana, there was a connection with the caribbean. A lot of ships made stops off in the caribbean before coming in to the mainland of the United States and so there was, there again, another chance for that kind of blending and syncrotism with South African and caribbean religions there coming into louisiana. These people were selected by slave traders for specific skills and traits that they had. Most of the people enslaved in louisiana, about 60 were senegandian in origin. People came to different parts of the u. S. As slaves for different reasons. A lot had to do with the crop they were familiar with growing. The very first two slave ships that came to louisiana in 1719, the captains 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, and the european planters did not have skills in planting indigo. It wasnt grown in europe. They had to find people who already knew how to grow it, already knew how to process it which is a complicated process and already knew how to build those fields. Same thing with rice. Skilled rice growers were brought into louisiana and also into south carolina. So you find these very directed, you know, trading going along the western coast of africa, going into specific markets in the United States to fill plantations there and create that crop wealth. So post of the people here in these early years that we can see were coming as we said from west and central africa. A few people born in the caribbean who had already been you know, coming from long trading there. But most people are coming internationally. And so something thats important to note about the Movement Across the atlantic during the time of the atlantic slave trade is the vast majority of settlement of the new world was african compulsory settlement. So of all the people who crossed from the old world to the new world until 1807, 4 out of 5 came from africa. So the vast majority of movement was enslaved africans being forced on ships and across the atlantic. And there are not good estimates about the actual number. The best historian whos done the work is david eltis. And the figure that hes kind of come at is about 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 about 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. And this is an enormous diaspora. Now, of that 12. 5 Million People, less than 5 actually came to the territories that became the United States. The vast majority of movement into slave societies 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. They were being smuggled into the United States. The last slave ship its estimated arrived in the United States in 1859 or 1860. And so thats really right up until the end of the civil war, people were being snuck in. It did cut off the majority of that trade. This is an interesting time around 1807 that at the exact same time the lands in the Mississippi River valley were just beginning to be developed. 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 tracts of land and really increasing their need and reliance upon compulsory labor, slave labor, they didnt have a supply of enslaved people coming from africa. And so what we we can see that 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 can see this happening on our wall here where you can already see them sort of trickling in, that 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. Here all the sudden all of these people are listed east coast. East coast is probably virginia. You can see that they came from an englishowned plantation by their names. Edwin, perry, claim, jack, tom, sam, these are all english names. 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. The upper south is virginia, tennessee, north carolina, virginia, maryland, tennessee, a little bit. But mostly centered in virginia and north carolina. And one Million People were moved down the river to louisiana, alabama, mississippi, where there was largescale plantations. So to give you an idea of this 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. It really cuts down an the amount of lands that they could work. And also they needed smallerscale labor. So they didnt a lot of the plantations there, they had 25, 50, slaves. Here in louisiana, we 101 on this plantation. And thats actually on the smaller end. Just very close by in homis house, there was a slave labor force of 750 enslaved people. You can see 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, say, 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 forever and her childrens children, all of that reproductive potential belonged to the person who owned that woman. 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. They would be born and raised on plantations in the upper south. And then most of them marched over land. Most of that movement was over land, 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. New orleans was the heart of that trade. So new orleans was tied to virginia, 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. This is where you can 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 describes this 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. Marie esely hidel who had no children of her own. Anna, as the family related to us, lived inside of the big house. And so would have had a an 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 1835 when anna was a young woman. So annas mistress had a brother, antwan, who impregnated anna. We dont know this was so long okay, we dont know if anna was raped by antwan or if they had some kind of relationship, although for enslaved women, there was no such thing as consent because they did not own their bodies. So victor was born of a hidel Family Member and an enslaved woman who was listed on her documents as american, malatras, mixedrace woman. Victor would have been considered here in louisiana what they called a quadrune, one quarter african descendant, three quarters european descendant. And enslaved by his own family. This is one instance that we know of for certain of all of these 354 people, over 100 years of ownership of the hidel family, we knew there were many, many, many more team born here of enslaved mothers and white hidel fathers. This kind of thing was common throughout the south. Those children born of those enslaved women belonged to their own family and would not necessarily be treated any better, and in many cases you can read narratives where the 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 actually 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. In louisiana, its a very different class thats kind of created here. Free people of color and also people enslaved by their own families, as well. This is called the gwendolyn midlow 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 the historian from new orleans put together, and that data base ends in 1820. Theres talk now of extending it to 1865. But 107,000 people are inscribed here. We have just their first names. And again, those are mostly coming from sale documents. 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 just take a few minutes to reflect and read those names and those testimonials. This is the last memorial 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 st. John the baptist parish. The parish that were in here at the whitney plantation. Its centered by a sculpture by rod morehead from mississippi. In is called coming home. So we have along the walls here, the names, date of death, ages, and names of the mother of all of these children who died. These are recorded in the church records. So our historian did the research in pulling those records out of the church and recording them here. So heres 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. Sometimes we see this notation when people were 2 years old or 3 years old. People who definitely had payments that, but even at death were just, you know, when they were barn they were born into a lower class, of course, as enslaved people. It was not seen as important enough to record the names that they had or to look into it to find out what their name was in life. So the whitney plantation was for the most the longest amount of time was a sugar plantation. Today our sugar fields come right up to the edge of where we interpret. And historically the land had a sugar mill on its site, as well. 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. This is like a little village. All of the jobs that needed to sustain this group of 100plus people were done here. They made the food here, grew the food here, worked on textiles and things like that. Carpenters and the like. Sugar processing happens at the end of the year. So the growing season here thats currently its early october, sugar is still very much growing. Its going to 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 can 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 would be a fire underneath. So the goal with these kettles is to take grounddown sugar stalks, 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 that sugar cane and boil it in these giant kettles. These would have to be tended. This is a 24 hour a day process for about 1 month. The people who worked in making sugar would be standing next to kettles like this using longhandled ladles and physically scooping the juice from one kettle to the next to the next to the next. And then putting it in cooling pans where it would granulate. This as you can imagine would be a very hot and dangerous process. They were boiling sugar sap. Its sticky. It would be 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 who were making the sugar. So it was dangerous in that way. And we 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 then sit on it for a little while and then process it later. As soon as its cut, it starts to die, and its not going to make good sugar. So thats why that 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, as i mentioned. All of them were torn down by the 1970s. By the end of the civil war, there were 22 slave cabins on this site. They looked about like this. So this is pretty typical. And its essentially a duplex. Its it would be a family on each side or if not a real family, a fictive family, common in slavery for people to form fictive kinship bonds. The slaves on this site were arranged the way weve brought these in. There would be two rose facing each other with a central courtyard in the center. So you can imagine that that would have created a kind of community there. And these were also set back from the plantation big house by about a half a mile. There was some physical distance between where the hidel family lived and where the enslaved workers lived. And that distance 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. An overseer would be monitoring them at all stages of the day to ensure that they got up at the right time to time, they were at work at the right time, and they were back at the cabins at the right time. That said, especially because theres that distance and theres so much space here, there are a lot of the plantations out here on the river road. Something that was very common in particular in this region, but other regions, as well, was something that they called running away just a little bit, for maybe just a night. Especially since families tended to be separated, and that wasnt even necessarily a long stance. You know, if a husband or wife were on neighboring plantations, they might be away from each other for maybe two miles or three miles. And so running away for just that two miles to go 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 were considered a runaway and could be punished for that. Enslaved people would be in the cabins mostly at night. The workdays stretched from what they said was cant see to cant see. So, in other words, from dawn until dusk, they would be out at their jobs then come back to the cabins at nighttime. Nighttime back at the cabins would be a time for communion with people there, their families, you know, like we said, the fictive families, and also food preparation. Enslaved people were given rations by the plantation owner. And typically the most common thing that you can read about enslaved narratives are cornmeal and bacon. Bacon would be essentially fatbacked pork belly, lots of fat. Not a nutritious cut. And not considered really the high cut, the good cut that the family would be eating. They would also receive things like intestines, pig feet. These are all things that have, of course, been sustained for a very long time 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 that originate in africa, black eyed peas, watermelon, these are things that came to the new world with enslaved people, okra also, which is important here in louisiana for making gumbo. And so people brought with them their african food ways and kind of supplemented it the best way they could with the ingredients that they had here. People cooked in their cabins. There were usually fireplaces in the cabins where they could prepare meals. But in a place like south louisiana where its very, very hot, a lot of the time we imagine that they would be preparing almost like a campfire outside. So they didnt have that smoke and heat inside of their cabins. The furnishings and cabins were varied across time and space. And all of these things are going to be different on different plantations. The 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 can read about in slave narratives. When people talk about the types of furnishings that they had. A rope bed like this is something thats kind of common. And this is basically just blanks with ropes attached. What we have here, weve shown so that you can see, this 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 making a pallet on the floor. In fact, solomon northup, who was enslaved in louisiana, he never described sleeping in a bed for the full 12 years. He talked about sleeping on a palett on the floor. People would be treated differently at different places. Beds like this, about the size of, say, a full bed today, this would be a bed for an entire family. Children, mom, and dad, if theyre all there together, would be all sharing space. And you can see theres not a lot of space in these cabins, so there wouldnt be much of a sense of privacy. What we would think of as being appropriate in a family and being private. All of that living was done in just a couple of rooms, everybody together. There is an 1868 jail that we brought in from gonzalez, louisiana. There is not a slave jail. Built in 1868, its from a few years after the conclusion of slavery. But we brought it in as a learning tool so that we can see the types of typical spaces where enslaved people were confined, especially leading up to sales. This is a very typical design of that era, and you can see there are a few photographs of pens that were in the backs of auction houses that are very similar in design to this. Typically in an auction house like, say, something that you would find in the city of new orleans, there would be a a front room where the auction would take place. And then in the back, a small courtyard with a row of cells enclosed in a courtyard so people could come out during the day and sleep in the cells at night. In addition to pens that were 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. 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 those 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 extralegal 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, they might be made of brick, or people might be confined in a barn or extra room somewhere. But those that kind of confinement was typical. A lot of people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana would at one time or another experience being sold at an auction. Especially since so many people who were enslaved in the lower south had come from the upper south. So they had been sold off of a plantation and then 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 elucidates the Market Forces behind enslavement. This is not just a southern institution. Of course, the raw good thats we were producing in the south supplied the northern and foreign factories, but also that 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, the upper south, he would sometimes pay full cash value for them up there. But it would be a wholesale rate. You can see how people were commodified, they were paid a wholesale rate in the upper south. If he did not have the full cash amount, he could put a mortgage on that person. They would be insured for the time that they were being transited down to the lower south, then brought 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 in the upper south. If he had a note, that mortgage, on that person, he would pay off that mortgage and pocket the profit. And so the same way that we commodify houses, cars, livestock, these were the exact same forces that were in the commodification of human beings during the time of enslavement. All of that is being transacted in this kind of, you know, calculated way. On the ground floor, on the actual human side of it, what that story is, of course, 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 and just traveled a Long Distance away from everything that theyve ever known. And all of that is being done with a price tag. People who were locked up in slave pens also sometimes 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 low, sometimes slave traders would wait and keep them locked up in a jail or keep them locked up in the boat that they had come on. And just wait for those markets to improve so that they could make a higher return on their investment. As far as the actual dollar amount, what people are being sold for here in louisiana, a good rate that you see pretty commonly is 900 to 1,000. For somebody who was skilled, that might go up to 1,500. And theres a another sort of seedy underbelly of the the slave trade called the fancy trade. Fancy women, fancy girls, girls who were seen as beautiful, who might be used as concubines or sex slaves my sold for 2,000, talking 19th century money. When you translate it to today, an enormous amount of money they were spending on those individuals. This area that were standing in right now is the whitney plantation historic district. And this is where we have the highest concentration of original structures all centered around the 1790 big house. Over here we have the original sleight of the kitchen, and there was a kitchen here from as far as we can 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 the land in 1999. It was just about falling over. He had to right the building and rebuild the hearth entirely. A lot of these structures were falling apart into the ground. Ambros hidel who emigrated from germany and founded his plantation in 1772, his son, jean jacques hidel, built this big house. Later it was occupied by jean jacques sons, jean jacques jr. And marcelyn hidel. They operated it in partnership until 1839 at which point marcelyns 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 hidel family. And we have record of a couple of cooks that were listed on different inventories, marie and marie joseph. Cooks would be assisted by domestics, people who lived either inside the big house or close to the big house and assisted the family. And they would do things, you know, ranging from cleaning inside 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 called hearth cooking. So she would build a fire in the center here. And most of her cooking is, again, not done on those flames, but done on the embers that are built up by that fire. So the reason that she would have to start so early is she would have to get a large supply of coals by burning lots and lots of wood, and then raking those coals out on to the hearth to prepare food. So we have a couple of examples of ways that people prepared food on those coals. This works almost like an eye, and you put a flatbottom pot there. We have something called a spider pot. See, its built with legs. So the coals go underneath, and then there would be a top here to retain that heat, and the coals would go on top of the pot, as well. You can see a good example of this here where this is constructed with almost like fingers coming up. So those can retain all of the coals on the top. So a lot of cooks day in preparing all of 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, in an oven, could be prepared in pots like this over a hearth. And basically it creates a dutch oven. So we 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 had native american ingredients, african ingredients. If you think about the food ways of south louisiana, there is kind of an African Center there. Something like gumbo, for instance, is an african food. But it has this kind of european and native american vocabulary in it, as well. They would also be preparing any types of foods that the family had specifically requested. And we have remains, archaeological remains here, of cow, apparently an extraordinary amount of beef, and there were cow teeth found on this site. That tells us that the cook was doing everything from butchering all the way to preparing the food. We also found remains of turkey, freshwater drum, turtle, pork. The freshwater drum and turtle are interesting because those are expressive of food ways in south louisiana. So this is a raised creole cottage. The style of architecture, again built circa 1790. It seems to have been built in two campaigns or perhaps raised at a later time. But it was complete to this configuration by 1805. And then briefly, a quick renovation in the 1830s to add dormers. Other than that, it remains pretty much unchanged. So the house was lived in by three generations, excuse me, or 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 who worked on this plantation would come into this house through the back. Weve made a choice to enter through the black as enslaved people would enter it. The front of the house is really where you get the kind of grand vista. But the back is really more of the labor center. 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 then take it to the dining room. We are in the dining room of the whitney plantation big house. The dining room is on the ground floor, and the floor has a spanish tile which we had recreated, we did find fragments. This tile here when we were doing the restoration. 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 mississippi not terribly far. And 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. There was a lot of kind of give and take, and there was a lot of flooding. Some of these big houses, and this may have been one of them, but we dont know, some of them were originally open air on the ground floor to allow for 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 not from the original pieces of the family since they stopped living here in 1867, but we have inventories that were used as our guide. Like an insurance adjuster, preparing for sale, they would walk room to room and record everything down to each individual fork. To the side we have another pantry that would be used for service. Around the corner on the floor, theres an interesting feature which is an olive jar sunk into the floor for refrigeration. This is original. So the enslaved domestics who worked here could use this to cool down food or wine or things like that they wanted to serve if they were preparing a chilled dessert. That would be 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 we know is that in a photograph in the 1920s, there was a fence coming up kind of close to the house, and there were gardens coming right up against the front of the house which is an oldfashioned configuration for landscape design. That would be sometimes food crops and sometimes, you know, flowers. But just a real mish mash of things grown up against the house. This house, the beltways constructed, is typical of french design, french and caribbean. Something thats a little bit unusual for people who live in areas settled by the english. It does not have interior hallways or staircases. However, the the porch here would function almost like a hallway. Each room comes out on to the porch. You could walk from one room on the end to one room on the other coming on the porch. Shotgun houses, its also important to note, are african in origin. And the people who built these houses were, of course, african and african descended slaves, building things that were familiar to them. Something that is 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 deteriorated. We have the original on the posts here. These are from the 1840s. This is from a time of great sugar wealth. So thats why in is really significant. Some people in the 1840s, 1850s built enormous mansions. Most of our visitors here are expecting to see Something Like tara, something theyve read about or seen in movies. By comparison, these are modest houses. But they were able to make enough money using the forced labor of african descended slaves to pay someone to come out and hand paint faux marble on the baseboards, the fireplaces, the 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 can see the pineapple motif here and also the marbling paint on the fireplace, as well. This was the familys home. This was the hidel familys home. Enslaved people were in every room of this house performing labor. In a bedroom like this, the hidel Family Members might have personal servants, people who sometimes even in some houses, we dont know here, but in some houses they slept on pallets on the floor next to the bed of their owners. They would perform labor in this room like cleaning, of course, 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 wintertime, 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 here that enslaved domestics had to empty out. Everything from start to finish was done by enslaved workers, including, of course, raising children. So any children who were raised in this house, any hidel 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. And 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 and the most elaborate is on the ceiling. We believe that marie asaley hidel had the work commissioned. She was the owner from 1840 to 1860. Her husband had 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 lot of really remarkable furniture. The decor is really quite lovely. And most visitors imagine themselves as the people who would be relaxing, you know, they think wouldnt it be nice to relax in they room like this. Thiss important to think about the different ways that this room would be used. It would be a site of relaxation for the family, but it would be a site of labor for the enslaved people. So one thing, again, that we draw from solomon northups narrative that we know was common is if there were enslaved 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 northup, of course, was a very skilled fiddle player. After performing hours upon hours of work picking cotton in the sun and all he wanted to do was relax in his own cabin. He had to come into the house, be rented out to other plantations to perform 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 brought from the upper south. And as a reminder that these people lived inside the big house, as well. And well go from here out on to 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 dominici canova. Our conservator whose name was elise grenier, came out and uncovered all of this painting. You can see the condition that it was in over here. Theres a couple of spots that she left that are dark so that you can see how deteriorated it had been. And one thing thats interesting that she found when she uncovered this is something that is expressive a little 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 says 14th of july, 1894. Lilian at 10 years old right here. The tusan 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, 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 could see them as a method of oppression certainly in these types of labor forms. Plantations build stores and kind of like a Company Store and you hear about that in the north, too. A Company Store where the workers would have to shop there for all their goods and they could charge whatever price they wanted and they would jack that up and deduct that from the money they would make working in the fields. Share cropping is not common in sugar because you cant share crop sugar. You need the whole crop to make anything. You cant just grow this amount and get anything from it. They had wage laborers and the wage laborers would live in the same slave cabins. Of them would be the former slaves themselves or their descendants. People were living in there in the 1960s and working the same 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, you know, 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. It is integral and certainly not today in 1960s or 1900. None of these things, none of these forces in history make sense if you dont understand the force 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 inequality 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. Its really, really significant, i think, and a lot of Historic Sites and i think its important for people to come here and kind of get a more complete understanding of slavery. Youre watching American History tv every weekend on cspan3. Explore our nations past. American history tv on cspan3 created by americas Cable Television companies. Today were brought to you by these Television Companies who provide American History tv to viewers as a public service. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan3. Friends of the National World war ii memorial is an organization dedicated for preserving the memory of world war ii and often hosts programs targeted at educators as part of that mission. Tonight, an evening of talks from the group. Brigadier general Charles Mcgee looks back at his military career, particularly his time as part of the tuskegee airmen. Black military pilots who served in army corps segregated units during the war. Mcgee later served with the air force in korea and vietnam and in total flew more than 400 combat missions across 3 wars. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and enjoy American History tv every weekend on cspan3. Each week, American History tvs american artifacts explores the history of the United States through objects. Up next, we visit capitol hill to talk to house historian Matthew Wasniewski and house curator farar elliott. And to see a selection of artifacts from the house collection. The story of how africanamericans come to