Tag Archives: black history

A righteous conflagration?

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Nottoway Plantation burned to the ground this week (week of May 11, 2025).

Reactions have been mixed.

Here is an Instagram response from food historian and all-round mensch, Michael W. Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene, A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South.

I shared an upclose look at the problem in this post, where I recalled my abhorrence at a witnessing a wedding being set up at Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston.

TL;DR A local historian pointed out that absent wedding income the historic site would’ve been turned into a golf course.

I saw fingerprints of enslaved brick makers in the structures there, so I can attest to the power of preservation. Still how to square the dissonance?

Compare: grinning selfies (real or staged) in front of the conflagration or reposts of whiny white laments with the caption, “Cry harder, Scarlett.”

Here’s a powerful poem read on FB this morning.

And then there’s this, posted on FB by the founder of The Slave Dwelling Project, Joseph McGill.

Another place to celebrate is Whitney Plantation, a historic site that does not rent its space for weddings and parties.

What are your thoughts? In spite of the historic preservation ideas that underpin some of the noncelebratory responses reported here, I’ll admit to finding the photo of the classically-constructed Southern Big House on fire extremely satisfying.

Civil Rights Tour # 6 — Selma again

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Picture this: a well-heeled white woman standing next to her shiny SUV in front of the artists’ cooperative that we were about to visit. Hear her going on and on about how great Selma is. Well worth more than a single day of your time! We have great churches. We have great synagogues… (huh? One of us is Jewish, but did SHE know that?)

I don’t doubt that Selma is a great place, one that deserved more exploration. We skimmed the surface, in and out in a few hours. We walked over the famous bridge, had lunch, quickly visited two “interpretive centers,” grabbed some ice cream, and were off.

But Selma’s obvious state of decline made me sad. Really sad. It struck me as emblematic of decades of misguided Republican “trickle down economics” and racist policies. Downtown was dead and further out wasn’t better — peppered with shacks, run down apartment complexes, boarded up gas stations.

Maybe the city gleamed before Covid, but I kind of doubt it.

We had lunch. Or tried to. I’ll give this place points for style, for friendliness, and for an earnest effort. But boy was it a miss. The food sucked, I mean really sucked. And we waited and waited for it, even though there was only one other group there.

Across the street: a faded Israeli flag and a neon sign reading: gentle human / thank you for coming.

Alabama River

There were two interpretive centers (that seems to be a new name for museums) — one on one side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and one on the other. One was compact and polished with well-produced audio-visual presentations and a nice gift shop. The other was folksy, expansive, and more than a little worn at the edges.

The less-polished place started with an introduction by the guy at the front desk. It was elevated speech, nearly oratorical, with much mopping of the brow. Inside, we quickly appreciated the museum’s attempt to honor the “foot soldiers” of the Selma/Montgomery march. There were news clippings affording detail not found in more mainstream reporting, lots of photos, and even plaster casts of some of the protesters’ feet.

I was too tired to avail myself of the many resources at the other interpretive center, although this portrait (below) certainly caught my eye.

Sheriff Jim Clark, known for his violent temper

He looks like a monster, doesn’t he? He’s the reason Selma was chosen as a site for the march to Montgomery. His reactive, racist brutality could be depended upon to make a spectacle.

Finally, before leaving town we visited the “Candy Lady.” The place was almost deserted and the owner thanked us profusely for coming in and buying a few bowls of ice cream. That seemed revealing of two things: one, that she was possibly hurting for business and two, that in casual encounters people in the South are so much nicer than Northerners. By miles. It’s almost disorienting how much nicer Southerners are. Especially given the history.

Dated March 19, 1965. Seen at the museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis

Black History, a selection

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From The 1619 Project, EPISODE TWO: “Rape was so prevalent during slavery that today 1/4 of the genetic makeup of Black Americans can be traced back to Europe through the paternal line.”

Colonial governments made descent of children of enslaved women matrilineal in order to ensure that any children they bore were slaves (even the mixed race children, say, of their owner).

The episode goes on to examine the lopsided health care that contemporary Black women receive, tying the shameful conditions directly back to slavery.

FACT: Black women die in childbirth at THREE TIMES the rate of white women.

FACT: Black infants die at TWICE the rate of whites babies, a discrepancy that disappears when the OB is Black.

FACTS: Black patients are under-treated for pain, as if there were biological differences between Black and white people. Furthermore, their life expectancies are shorter and they’re often blamed for their health issues.

Slave owners always had an economic interest in the reproduction of their slaves, but after Congress banned the importation of Africans in 1808, it became an even more important way to preserve and build wealth.

In the amazing novel WASH, by Margaret Wrinkle, the white slave owning protagonist hires out the enslaved character named Wash for the purpose of procreation. Keeps meticulous records. Is paid for the “exchange.” One of many poignant moments occurs towards the end when Wash burns that ledger and lets those flames then take a barn down.

I know from my research that in South Carolina in the mid-eighteenth century, slave owners believed that breeding Africans with Native Americans would produce stock better adapted to winters.

Breeding. Stock.

And BTW, another source of wealth for early colonizers as to round up, kidnap, and sell Native Americans to slave markets in the West Indies. Native Americans were not favored as slaves in South Carolina because they had family in the area and knew the landscape better than anyone, heightening the chances of their escape.

Hold the sugar

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This pink t-shirt emblazoned with a pithy statement supports The Slave Dwelling Project. Don’t you love getting bling for your contributions? I do. Or maybe this was a straight out purchase. I don’t remember. In any case, this is a particularly good cause, one offering experiences like the one I had with the group in Medford, Mass. in 2014 (posted about here).

Revealingly, when I looked for the shirt this morning I mis-remembered the statement as, “I like my history Black with a little bit of sugar.” Hmmmm. Probably accurate, though my reading list would suggest otherwise (PS, I finally finished all 500+ pages of “The Warmth of Other Suns”).

I love it when friends challenge me. In the wake of the Parkland shooting, a FB friend from high school pointed out two important facts: 1) the number of school shootings being reported by Everytown for Gun Safety is highly inflated, counting, for instance, a suicide in the parking lot of a school that’d been closed for seven months and the accidental discharge of a weapon in a man’s glove box in a school parking lot (no one was hurt), and 2) there are more gun laws in areas with high numbers of POC (which is to say, whites are scared shitless of black people carrying weapons).

Article about Everytown’s inflated numbers here.

Atlantic article about race and gun laws here.

Neither of these points, while well-taken, change my view that Americans are in urgent need of sensible gun regulations.

The non-inflated number of school shootings in the first seven weeks of 2018, by the way, is FIVE. Isn’t that shocking enough?

Meanwhile on a more personal front, the list of items I cannot find is getting annoying. I located the notebook from writing class, but still can’t find my earbuds (I wore them yesterday) or the external hard drive that I back my manuscript up on (I’ll save to a thumb drive ’til I locate it, but really?). That’s been missing for at least a week.

Speaking of manuscripts: there’s a solid chance that my first foray into the publishing world will be a bust. If so, I’m prepared to accept the rejection as a badge of honor. If it comes, the ding will stand as a sign that I’m putting myself out there, while also initiating me into a literary club absolutely littered with rejection notices.

Not a prediction and not feeling of defeat. Just saying.