Grief for a House. Silence for the Enslaved.
When a plantation burned, media mourned a wedding venue. But Black voices named the truth: it was always a graveyard.
I have a scan of social media that I do too many times in a given day. It was one of those moments, and I opened Threads to see post after post by various Black creators talking about a plantation fire in Louisiana. I started writing this post a week before my son’s weeklong graduation festivities. A week of celebrating, and a week when grandparents came to celebrate. This was a week when we could see clearly what gets passed down from generation to generation, and the cost we incur when we lie about it.
So, here’s what happened. On May 16, 2025, the Nottoway Plantation, the “largest surviving antebellum mansion1 in the South,” caught on fire. That fire initially subsided, then reignited — and the second blaze raged. The newspaper articles2 I found mourned the loss of the wedding venue. Excuse me, what? I started to understand what the Black creators were talking about because the media was mourning the loss of history. But whose history? And, how was that history made?
Any living plantation is a monument to slavery, and nothing else. If you have a wedding in a place where so much generational harm was caused, you are celebrating on the graves of ancestors, and that is the highest form of cruelty, bigotry, and a morally corrupt way of existing in the world. Consider Native Americans who mourn when white people desecrate their graves for development. This is similar. Taimani Emerald, artist, named, “They called it elegant. They called it Southern charm. But what it was — was a graveyard.”3 So, really, as named by Nika Redmond, “What’s collapsing isn’t just a building. It’s a myth, the myth that pain can be polished, that blood can be scrubbed clean and repackaged as heritage.”4
We cannot do this anymore. We must speak the truth. The truth is, any plantation is a graveyard made in some of the most horrific ways. Kahil Greene named, “No one hosts weddings at Auschitz,”5 because it’s fucking gross. So many lives lost for a cruel, disgusting agenda. It should be so clear to anyone paying attention how little the U.S. has done to remediate its sins of the past. Conversations about reparations are never taken seriously and wind up circling the drain of abstract numbers. No number is enough when we consider the harm our country has done for generations and continues to do to Black and Brown people.6 And, as this Times article notes, “After the Civil War, four million people were liberated, but without a dollar to their names.”7
So, I’m curious, why is Black suffering seen as something that can be dressed up, sold, and celebrated?
I wrote recently about how budgets are moral documents.8 And our actions here also show clearly where we lack any moral high ground.
Bill Bigelow was a history teacher here in Portland, Oregon, in the 1990s. A former beau had him as a teacher, and this beau explained a dramatic lesson. On the first day of class, Bigelow would seize a young woman’s purse. He’d begin rifling through it, examining all the contents, and then he’d claim the thing for himself. The students may have cried outrage, but he’d land with something like, “What’s the matter? I discovered it.” Herein lies how Columbus “discovered” the Americas (by bringing disease and genocide). Columbus was a thief and a murderer. He wasn’t a hero. Bigelow introduced students to an important lesson: why we must teach history aggressively — not by sugarcoating things, but with clarity and feeling. The Nottoway Plantation has never apologized to the people it harmed — the descendants, the ancestors. The fire serves as something the refusal to apologize could ever be — the fire was a rupture, a refusal to lie any longer.
The Nottoway Plantation should never have been a wedding venue. It should have been an altar asking for forgiveness for the sins of the past and making active steps towards atonement. Lacking that, nature has taken its course. In this image, “Wildest Dreams” by Taimani Emerald, you can see ancestors rejoicing as the plantation burns. That it caught on fire twice feels like “A long-overdue exhale.” (see Footnote 3)
Quoting Taimani Emerald, again, “May we build altars, not attractions. May we teach truth, not tradition.” (see Footnote 3)
We are at a reckoning in our world. We can continue to honor the tortured past, where monuments to terror have been normalized. Or, we can pave a new way. It would benefit all of us to consider what lies we have told ourselves in the name of politeness or heritage. What lies have you told? I’m also curious, what does a reckoning really look like in our homes, our schools, and our rituals? I think it means we get really clear on the values of humanity - that every person deserves access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we stop qualifying people by whether they are legal or not, or some other gross form of showing papers. I believe a reckoning involves stepping radically into the values of compassion and honor, and atoning for the sins of our past.
As I finish this, graduation has come and gone. We’ve even started pre-orientation at his new school, a Catholic University down the road from our house. And, this university has declared, multiple times, its inclusion — even when popes do not. I want my son to inherit truth and core values, not illusion. I want his generation to build a world where no one hosts a wedding on a grave.
Share this post with someone who’s still clinging to nostalgia instead of truth. May we all open our eyes together, and make a path for a better world for our children and their children.
Louallen, Doc. “Historic Louisiana Plantation Destroyed in Massive Fire.” ABC News, May 16, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/US/nottoway-historic-louisiana-plantation-destroyed-massive-fire/story?id=121876986.
Brasted, Chelsea. “Historic Nottoway Plantation Burns.” Axios New Orleans, May 16, 2025. https://www.axios.com/local/new-orleans/2025/05/16/nottoway-plantation-burns-antebellum-louisiana.
Kahn, Melina. “Nottoway Plantation Fire Destroys Historic Site.” The Shreveport Times, May 16, 2025. https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2025/05/16/nottoway-plantation-fire-louisiana/83671757007/.
Emerald, Taimani. “Facebook Post on Nottoway Plantation Fire,” 2025. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ab6QJqeYB/?mibextid=wwXIfr.
Redmond, Nika. “Threads Post on Plantation Fire (1 of 2),” 2025. https://www.threads.com/@jredmondsphotography/post/DJvHP4vJIt_?xmt=AQF0NJ4gjNxHb2HJjsKfhoOGx8cY2n6VGb6oIuhEDqRY3w.
———. “Threads Post on Plantation Fire (2 of 2),” 2025. https://www.threads.com/@jredmondsphotography/post/DJvHQQHJ1Yv?xmt=AQF0NJ4gjNxHb2HJjsKfhoOGx8cY2n6VGb6oIuhEDqRY3w.
Greene, Kahlil. “Commentary on Plantation Weddings vs. Auschwitz,” 2025.
(Author’s note) Just because no number is big enough doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find one…
Hassan, Abdeel. “Where Reparations Stand in the U.S.” The New York Times, July 1, 2023, sec. Race/Related. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/black-americans-reparations.html.
“This Bill isn’t Beautiful. It’s Brutal”. https://substack.michellelasley.com/p/this-bill-isnt-beautiful-its-brutal