Nottoway Plantation Destroyed by Fire
I recall a lengthy lunch with graduate school friends at a well-known New Orleans restaurant in the French Quarter. The walls were adorned with memorabilia. While enjoying my gumbo, I noticed my friends were distracted by what was behind me. The paintings, old menus, and other artifacts depicted an idealized South where enslaved people contentedly served the landowners. Having seen these images throughout my life, I had become accustomed to them. However, my friends from countries like Canada and South Korea were disturbed.
Louisiana, like much of the South, has many former plantations. However, on May 15, 2025, the largest remaining plantation mansion completely burned due to an electrical fire, leaving only part of the facade standing. The rest was destroyed.
Nottoway , like many plantations, was repurposed as a venue for weddings and photoshoots. Currently, the website describes Nottoway as a “resort” offering amenities like a gym, pool, and tennis courts. The description lists the dimensions of certain oak trees but omits the history of the plantation, its construction, or the events that transpired there.
Many, including myself, view the plantation as a former slave labor camp where crimes against humanity went unpunished and those associated with these crimes were often celebrated.
John C. Calhoun, Vice President under Andrew Jackson, frequently argued that slavery benefited America by generating wealth for the ruling class. Slavery was profitable for individuals like Calhoun. By 1863, many of the wealthiest Americans were plantation owners from the “Cotton Belt”.
Calhoun even claimed that slavery was beneficial to the enslaved because it provided them with necessities they couldn’t obtain themselves. Films such as Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind perpetuated this idea in the 20th century, portraying plantations as places of prosperity where the elite lived well and the enslaved were regarded as beloved family members. In “Gone With The Wind,” Scarlett O’Hara had beautiful dresses, numerous suitors, and an enslaved caretaker who offered maternal advice.
However, these portrayals are fictional. No classic Hollywood film tells the story of plantation life from the perspective of the enslaved, which would have shattered the myth. These films did not depict the enslaved families’ feelings as they were forced to enrich others, while their family members were sold to other labor camps.
There is no doubt that the enslaved workers at Nottoway Plantation during the antebellum era were treated as property. They were unpaid, unable to leave, and had no rights to property, their children, or their own bodies. They also had no legal recourse, even if they or a loved one was assaulted, raped, or murdered.
The central question is how should we treat the physical sites of such terrible histories?
In Amsterdam, near the Rijksmuseum and a tulip-filled park, is the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank was a young woman who hid with her family from the Nazis in the attic of this house. She was eventually captured and killed.
There are also the “Doors of No Return” on the west coast of Africa. These memorials in Senegal and Benin mark the points from which Africans were transported into chattel slavery.
In 2023, I visited the Doorway of No Return at the House of Slaves on Gorée Island in Senegal, where knowledgeable tour guides provided detailed accounts of the suffering endured by people held in the building. (Some were confined to spaces under the stairwells, no larger than a doghouse.) Given this context, it was impossible not to be moved at the end of the tour when the guide allowed me to stand at the doorway’s threshold. There were no tennis courts or facials available at the House of Slaves.
Between 2017 and 2022, I visited Amsterdam three times for research. I tried to visit the Anne Frank House each time, but the line of people waiting to witness the events that occurred there stretched down the block. By all accounts, seeing the inside of the house is a powerful experience.
Herein lies the issue with America’s attitude toward its former slave labor camps: they are controversial because they overlook their own histories. While some plantations attempt to contextualize their past (the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, is a prime example), many others offer sanitized versions of history designed to make visitors comfortable with what happened there. This is particularly harmful when visitors believe they are on an educational tour.
Most people would not want to take glamorous photos at the site of a human catastrophe. Most would be horrified if someone held a party where their great-great-grandmother was imprisoned and abused. Any attempt to transform the World Trade Center site into a vacation resort would likely face widespread opposition from Americans.
This is because the past must be confronted. Recognition and mourning must precede reconciliation. If Nottoway Plantation had been serving the community it was based in, I would be devastated by its loss. But as it is, I feel nothing.
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