Whitney Plantation Historic District
Front of the Big House
Whitney Plantation Historic District is located in Louisiana
Whitney Plantation Historic District
Whitney Plantation Historic District is located in the United States
Whitney Plantation Historic District
Nearest cityWallace, Louisiana
Coordinates30°2′21″N 90°39′2″W / 30.03917°N 90.65056°W / 30.03917; -90.65056
Area40 acres (16 ha)
Built1790 (1790)
Architectural styleFederal, French Creole
Websitewhitneyplantation.org
MPSLouisiana's French Creole Architecture MPS
NRHP reference No.92001566[1]
Added to NRHPNovember 24, 1992[2][3]

The Whitney Plantation Historic District is preserved by the Whitney Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the Southern United States. The district, including the main house and outbuildings, is preserved near Wallace, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, on the River Road along the Mississippi River. Habitation Haydel was founded in 1752 by Ambroise Heidal, one of the many German immigrants who colonized the river parishes in the 18th century. His descendants owned it until 1860.[4] In 1867 it was sold to businessman Bradish Johnson who renamed it Whitney.[5]

Overview

The plantation was a 1,800-acre property. Today, 200 acres are occupied by the museum[4] which opened to the public for the first time in December 2014. (The remaining acreage was sold off by the previous owners in the 1970s.) The museum was founded by John Cummings, a trial attorney from New Orleans who has spent more than $8 million of his own fortune on this long-term project, and worked on it for nearly 15 years.[6][7] The director of research is Dr. Ibrahima Seck, a Senegalese scholar specializing in the history of slavery.[4] The grounds contain several memorial sites dedicated to over 100,000 women, men, and children who were enslaved in Louisiana. In addition, original art commissioned by Cummings, such as life-size sculptures of children, were added to help tell the history of slavery. The sculptures are representative of people born into slavery before the Civil War, many of whom were interviewed as adults for the Federal Writers Project during the Great Depression. These oral histories of hundreds of the last survivors of slavery in the United States were collected and published by the federal government, to preserve their stories. The transcripts and some audio recordings are held by the Library of Congress.[8][4] Mr. Cummings donated the entirety of the museum and land to a non-profit in 2019.

Historic Structures

The French Creole raised-style[2][3] main house, built in 1790, is an important architectural example in the state. The plantation has numerous outbuildings or "dependencies": a pigeonnier or dovecote, a plantation store, the only surviving French Creole barn in North America (ca. 1790), a detached kitchen, an overseer's house, a mule barn, and two slave dwellings. The complex includes three archaeological sites[2][3] which have had varying degrees of exploration.

The 1884 Mialaret House, and its associated buildings and property, were added to the complex by later purchase. They help to reflect the long working history of the plantation.[9] Some of the extensive land is still planted with sugarcane.

The Whitney Plantation historic district was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[2][3] It is one of 26 sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

Ownership of the Whitney

The Whitney Plantation's land was first bought in 1752, by Ambroise Heidal, an immigrant from Germany. At some point his family changed their surname to Haydel. Upon Ambroise's death, ownership of the land passed to his youngest son, Jean Jacques Haydel. In 1820, this son extended the property to his own sons, who were named Jean Jacques Jr. and Marcellin. Jean Jacques Jr. and Marcellin later bought a plantation next to the property they had been given by their father. After Marcellin's death in 1839, his widow Marie Azélie Haydel ran the plantation during its most productive time, during which it was one of Louisiana's most well-to-do sugarcane businesses. Marie was one of Louisiana's largest slaveholders by the time she died in 1860. Later, in 1867, after the American Civil War had ended, Bradish Johnson became the owner of the plantation, which he renamed Whitney, in honor of his daughter who had married a man with that surname. John Cummings owned the Whitney from 1999 to 2019, and spent over ten years restoring it before opening it to the public. He donated the Whitney in 2019, and it is now a 501(c)(3) organization governed by a board of directors.[10][11][12]

A memorial to the 1811 German Coast uprising of slaves, located at the Whitney

A scene from the 2012 Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained was filmed in the rebuilt blacksmith's shop.[6]

The Atlantic magazine made a short documentary video about the museum in 2015, Why America Needs a Slavery Museum.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Whitney Plantation Historic District". National Historic Places Register. Retrieved August 3, 2020 – via National Register Database, Louisiana.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. October 13, 1992. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Amsden, David (February 26, 2015). "Building the First Slavery Museum in America". New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Ownership of the Whitney". Whitney Plantation.
  6. 1 2 Kaminsky, Jonathan (January 17, 2015). "Harsh world of slavery focus of Louisiana plantation museum". Reuters. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  7. 1 2 Rosenfeld, Paul (August 25, 2015). "Why America Needs a Slavery Museum". The Atlantic.
  8. ↑ "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938". Library of Congress.
  9. ↑ "Whitney Plantation Historic District". Travel Itinerary, National Park Service. National Park Service. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  10. ↑ Clint Smith. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Little, Brown and Company. 2021. pg. 57. ISBN 978-0-316-49293-5. Hardcover version.
  11. ↑ "Louisiana History". Whitney Plantation.
  12. ↑ "Ownership of the Whitney". Whitney Plantation.
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