Week 62

Our mission district has six young elders (and us).  We had them all over for an early Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday afternoon--we had cranberry pork loin instead of turkey, but otherwise pretty traditional.  After dinner we went scouting out apartments in Alexandria to get ready for another set of young missionaries who will arrive at the next transfer.

On Wednesday another of our inmates who hasn't joined us for a long time came back to the group.  It was good to see him again and we had a really good discussion.

Now, buckle your seat belt, here come a zillion pictures of our Thanksgiving break.  On Thursday we went down to Baton Rouge.  We started the day at Houmas House--a lovely sugar cane plantation house.  It was one of the most interesting plantation tours we've had.  The Houmas Indians originally had all the land, and the French bought huge parcels for ridiculously small amounts of guns, powder, and jewelry. 

Christmas decorations in the live oak trees

A limb of an 850 year old live oak tree

Bottom: mural of sugar cane on the walls in entry way, Top: a clock once owned by Marie Antoinette
and a 65-pound silver sculpture of Abe Lincoln by Mount Rushmore sculptor (not original to plantation house--most wouldn't be excited about Lincoln; the current owner picked it up at an auction)

Christmas decorations and, bottom, the Jacksons--a senior couple we ran into on the tour

Various sights

We had our adequate, not great, dinner at a cafeteria.  That evening we went to see the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  It's not a children's movie, but a wonderful story based on an incident in the life of Mr. Rogers and a reporter.

After watching the reconstruction process for over a year, we finally got to attend the Baton Rouge Temple on Friday morning.  It was simply beautiful and so lovely to have a temple much closer to us than Dallas or Houston.

While touring the Houmas House, we saw a large poster advertising the Whitney Plantation, the only plantation tour dedicated to the history of enslaved people.  So on Friday afternoon that's where we went.  Fascinating!!  In the brochure a quote from National Geographic says, "The plantation every American should visit."  We agree.

The visitors' center has a lot of information about slavery throughout the world and the transatlantic slave trade.

Unfortunately, Voltaire's statement is true

Life on a sugar cane plantation was far more difficult than on a cotton plantation.  If you were an enslaved person on a cotton plantation, the worst thing you could hear from your master is that you were going to be "sold down the river."  That meant you were being sold to a sugar cane plantation, and the average life expectancy on those was 10 years--regardless of how old you were when you started.  A 10 year old could expect to be dead at 20, and a 20 year old would be dead by 30. 

The slaves had to be baptized Catholic, but received no benefits of church membership.  After emancipation almost the first thing many freed people did was become Baptist and built a church.  This is the first stop on the tour--the Baptist church.

Inside the church and in various places throughout the plantation were wonderful clay statues of children.  They are based on actual photographs of children born into slavery.  They stand about 3 feet high, and were at once charming and haunting.  The artist is Woodrow Nash. Pardon the large number of pictures (there were many more statues), but they had a huge impact on us.

Much of the information presented throughout the plantation and museum was based on oral histories recorded on WPA projects of people who had been children and teens when emancipated--the only  people who had lived in slavery still alive during the Great Depression.  Also, records, bills of sale, and so on found on the plantation when the current owner bought it, as well as academic research went into creating this history.

The following plaques are just a few of the many remembering slaves at Whitney Plantation over the years.  Many of the people were enslaved in Africa and brought to America.  The first thing that happened to them was taking away their names and giving them English or French names.  Also, their actual birthplaces were generally lumped into huge regions, so they lost their actual place of origin as well. 

Wall of Honor

Allees Gwendolyn Mildo Hall Memorial to 107,000 slaves in Louisiana.  Our superb tour guide.

Memorial to the 22,000 enslaved children who died in Louisiana before the age of three

Slave cabins--each side housing up to 10 people

Bottom:  Sugar cane, cane boiling pots
Top:  Slave cabins, holding cages for the slave auctions

The detached kitchen--the cook was always treated well.
 She could poison the whole family if she got mad!

The big house--built by enslaved men

 In addition to taking the slave's original name and birthplace away, the system kept enslaved people illiterate and uneducated, divided families, and tried to create divisions in groups.  All worked to keep people subservient.  A slave could be beaten just for possessing paper and pencil even if he couldn't read. 

Prior to the African slaves, indentured servants from Europe came to work the fields, but most of them didn't live long enough to be free. 

Most Southerners didn't own slaves--only about 2% ever did, and most of those had only one or two (cook/maid and butler).  The other 1% were the holders of hundreds of slaves, and all their decisions about the purchase, selling, and treatment of their human "property" were purely economic.   Greed has caused, and continues to cause, incredible suffering in the world.  This tour was remarkable and so educational. 
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"Returning the Chains"