Americans Should Be Visiting Plantations

When I was 11, my school took a field trip to Walnut Grove Plantation, one of the oldest homes in South Carolina. The way the guides explained it, Scotch-Irish immigrants Charles and Mary Moore had been “given” the property by King George III in 1763, and they built their manor there in 1765.

That day, we were told about the house’s furnishings and what life was like for white settlers. Nothing was said about the 12 enslaved people who worked on the property, which once spanned 3,000 acres. Its boundaries sat just six miles from my childhood home.

Slavery is the reason my lineage exists in this country. Brought to coastal South Carolina in the 1730s, my ancestors were enslaved people whose labor helped make the state, at one point, one of the wealthiest colonies in the world. For almost 300 years my family has survived—and at times, thrived—in this lush but hostile environment.

As a young Black girl growing up in the 1990s in the rural South, I did not see myself in this landscape, in the history books, or in the stories shared in the classroom. When slavery was mentioned, it was glossed over as an aberration, as a thing that was fixed with the Civil War.

The America we learned about was one of great wealth, enterprising politicians, and leisure time at mansions framed by formal gardens and green grounds. Precious little was ever said about the people who made such vast wealth possible—the skilled labor force held in bondage. The afterlife of slavery was all around me, yet it frequently went unaddressed.

In the search to know my family’s place in the American story, I’ve scoured articles, books, diaries, census records, and slaveholder journals. Since that first trip to Walnut Grove, I’ve visited hundreds of other former plantations in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina in an attempt to better understand the roles Black people were forced into. The tours I’ve engaged with run the gamut. Some position the voices of enslaved people at the center. Others rebrand the plantation’s original wealthy inhabitants—slave traders who dealt in human cargo—as merchants.

Illustration by Mark Harris; Photos for two portraits by Sylvie Smith

Once, at Hampton Plantation State Historic Site in South Carolina, I asked a ranger about visiting the fields’ earthen structures—dams and dikes enslaved people built to make rice cultivation possible. She warned me about the viciousness of the mosquitoes. Covered in DEET, I set out, walking away from the Georgian house toward the creek. I will never forget the sound—the thip-thip-thip of thousands of insects. Clouds of mosquitoes clustered around my hands and the one-inch bands of exposed skin near my ankles. That experience, which left me with bites that turned into scars, put to bed any remaining notion that I might have had of benevolent slaveholders and loyal slaves, a fallacy we’re told time and time again. This framing is an old Southern parlor trick, a sleight of hand, an act of obfuscation. Historic entities can be good at this: practicing omission, exclusion, and sometimes outright erasure to tell a more palatable narrative. But why do plantation tours exist, if not to share the story of slavery? Of America?

“I think the role of plantations is to tell raw history, and to not hold back on heavy topics,” says Enfinitee Irving, an interpretive ranger with South Carolina State Parks. In her role, Irving creates and gives tours at Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site near the town of Union. Like me, she is a descendant of people who were once enslaved in South Carolina.

For travelers considering visiting plantations, Irving suggest starting with research: Who owns the plantation today, and what is their agenda in holding tours? How is this historic site bringing stories of the formerly enslaved to life?

“When someone gets out of the car [at Rose Hill], one of the first things they see as they’re walking up to the main house is a sign that says MORE THAN A MANSION,” Irving tells me. “We try to get people to understand as soon as possible that this house was built by enslaved people. And if we’re going to talk about this house, we need to talk about the skills and craftsmanship that went into it; how these enslaved laborers knew how to build structures made of bricks that have lasted for generations.”

Illustration by Mark Harris; Photos for Stagville Juneteenth exterior by Erik Waters

I treat plantations as sacred spaces. I step onto every property with the understanding that these beautiful homes and manicured gardens are the fruit of the suffering of a subjugated people. I listen for silences, and I ask questions about what goes unsaid. I inquire about any information gaps, and I ask where guides are getting their facts, and if the descendants of the enslaved are involved in the stories being told about the site. The best tours I’ve joined humanize the dehumanized, giving visitors the context to figure out the stakes each person had in maintaining the social order of the time. Rose Hill, for example, has identified 116 people once enslaved there. Their names are displayed during special events and programs.

I also remember that two things can be true at once. Landscapes like Rose Hill are the resting place for so many who did not survive the experience of chattel slavery. They are also the fertile ground from which much of American culture sprang. After all, it was in places like plantations where new culinary offerings and music and dance formed. People blended Indigenous, European, and West African elements to create something the world had never seen.

Plantations are spaces to talk about what we decide to preserve and what we leave to fade. The lessons of our past also inform the future, and plantations have stories to tell. “It takes so much for us to begin to right so many wrongs,” Irving says.” “But acknowledging that this happened is important.”

Where to Learn More

Six places across the South that are doing the work to tell a more inclusive story.

Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters

Savannah, Georgia

This 1819 mansion has some of the best-preserved urban slave quarters in the South, giving visitors a glimpse into the lives of 14 enslaved people who worked in a bustling city. Daily guided tours of the site begin every 15 minutes.

Whitney Plantation

Edgard, Louisiana

An hour’s drive west of New Orleans, the Whitney Plantation is Louisiana’s first museum dedicated exclusively to the history of slavery. The tour and exhibits focus on the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in Louisiana from 1719 to 1865. Every visitor receives a card that bears the story of a different enslaved person, gleaned from interviews with more than 2,300 former slaves conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Stagville State Historic Site

Durham, North Carolina

Using archaeology, oral histories, and archival research, Stagville centers the stories and experiences of enslaved people at one of the largest sites of mass slavery in North Carolina. From 1771 to 1865, the Bennehan-Cameron plantations here spanned 30,000 acres of land, and the family enslaved about 900 people. Before visiting, call ahead to confirm guided tour availability.

McLeod Plantation Historic Site

Charleston, South Carolina

A former 1850s Sea Island cotton plantation near Wappoo Creek, McLeod features “Transition Row,” six slave cabins that were home to generations of African Americans from the late 1700s through the 1980s. Tours begin every hour on the half-hour and discuss Sea Island cotton cultivation and processing, Gullah Geechee culture, and both organized and individual resistance to slavery and its legacy.

Belle Meade Historic Site & Winery

Nashville, Tennessee

This 250-acre tract of land sits seven miles from the heart of Nashville and functioned as a plantation from 1807 to 1865. The property discusses the institution of slavery as it existed in the thoroughbred horse-racing industry and utilizes primary sources and oral histories to shed light on the lives and labor of those held in bondage. Two different historic tours tell the stories of the men, women, and children who labored at Belle Meade.

Monticello

Charlottesville, Virginia

Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, who stressed that liberty and equality were natural human rights, was a slaveholder: more than 400 enslaved individuals lived and worked at the 5,000-acre Monticello plantation during his lifetime. A 45-minute tour, included in the cost of admission, focuses on Monticello‘s enslaved field hands, artisans, and domestic workers who left a lasting impact on Charlottesville history.