'Moonlight and Magnolias": Plantation Tourism and Historic Memory

Maria, this is an excellent post that is both informative and thought-provoking. I am always intrigued by the way public landmarks, historic site, tours, and museums influence historic memory and the ways that these places shape our collective understanding of the past. Plantations, in my mind, are among the most powerful symbols that influence our understanding of the past. The grandeur of the architecture, the landscape--complete with gardens, oak-lined alleys, and the opulence of elite material culture--silver, antiques, art and the like, conjure, for many visitors, a highly romanticized ideal of genteel refinement--the 'moonlight and magnolia' imagery of the plantation South. While the grandeur of these places aptly underscores the desires and aspirations of the planter elite, it does little in the way of revealing the ways in which this opulence was procured. More importantly, it leaves the lives of the enslaved in the background of a story in which they should be central. This point is not missed of black tourist that visit these historic sites. For example, in 1995, a group of students from Operation Understanding D.C., a youth organization that tries to rebuild relations between black Americans and Jews in the capitol city, visited Boone Hall Plantation. During the tour of the plantation, the white tour guide made no mention of slavery. The students were shocked and outraged by the omission, and one of them, 17-year-old Otis Todd, write the Director a letter of complaint. His letter said, in part, "I am African-American and it really hurt me to see that whoever wrote the tour felt that slavery was not important enough to be mentioned, but they thought that the trees and the china were important. Since when are things more important than people? he asked. Another student, Simone Evans, also 17, said, "For me, it's not about letting it go . . . It gave me a feeling of disgust that she (the guide) had the heart to look at me in my black face, smiled, then totally disregard my people who died there. I was enraged at that." This encounter raveled the problems inherent in interpreting plantations sites. Across the South, Plantations, most privately owned, grapple with the difficulties in attracting tourists, most of them white, and portraying an accurate history that many whites and some blacks prefer to ignore.

As the historic preservation movement gained momentum in the 1920s. Efforts to rescue plantations from decades of decay and neglect were driven, in part, by the desire of restore the grounds in a manner that glorified the colonial and antebellum histories. The desire to restore plantations in a manner that linked the family's collective identity to the larger narrative of American history fit the pattern of turn-of-the century historic preservation movements. Unlike some southern cities that turned to the "Cult of the Lost Cause," places like Lowcountry Louisiana and Southestern Louisiana looked further back and promoted a history-based tourism that celebrated the romantic and idealized memories of the colonial and antebellum eras.

Selective memories that celebrated an imagined colonial and antebellum past made plantation a popular site for white elites. However, by the 1970s and 1980s, many of the South's plantations were put into non-profit educational trusts. In an effort to meet the educational mission, most plantations hired historians, cultural interpreters, hire professional re-enactors and created on-site research centers that provided rich narratives of the property's past. While these efforts were very successful in creating interesting and informative exhibits and cultural activities that drew in tourists, these dynamic histories were reserved, almost exclusively, to the white experience. With little to no mention of slavery, visitors could enjoy the splendor of these properties without having to confront the brutal means by which they were obtained.

What was lacking, however, was any serious acknowledgement of the central role enslaved Africans and their descendants played in the creation and maintenance of these properties. The continued unwillingness to discuss slavery not only diminished the significance of Africans and their descendants, but also denied African Americans ownership in what was a very important chapter in their collective histories. It is not surprising, then, that the decision to focus on white elite culture helped ensure that sites Laura Plantation and Oak Alley have had a very difficult time attracting black visitors despite more recent efforts to target black audiences.

By the 1990s, the social and racial politics of the nation had evolved and plantation tourism sites could no longer afford to remain silent on the issue of slavery. Plantation sites throughout the South were increasingly pressured to at least nominally incorporate slavery into their interpretative narratives. Leaving the big house and gardens to the former masters, site interpreters segregated the black experience and began incorporating African American history by highlighting the artisan crafts that were once performed by highly skilled slaves. Interpreters, sometimes dressed in period garb, demonstrate blacksmithing, weaving, candle making, and carpentry. While such demonstrations certainly had educational value, they gave the impression that this was the labor of a typical slaves, leaving tourists with a very distorted notion of what slave labor was like on a large plantation. Even more problematic is the fact that most of the interpreters demonstrating the labor of slaves, are, in fact, white. Many plantations have renovated slave cabins and established exhibits that profile black plantation life. Despite these efforts, the stories remain segregated; African American heritage tours are typically separate from house and garden tours. The decision made to sell these sites on the romanticized ideal of the plantation legend continues to undermine efforts to offer an inclusive and historically accurate interpretive narrative of what is perhaps the darkest chapter of our nation's past. While many scholars and historic tourism professionals applaud the fact that there has been a significant evolution in the ways that the history of slavery is told, plantation tourism has not completely broken free from the interpretative yoke of the past. It is still very possible to spend the day at sites like Oak Alley and Laura Plantation caught up in the nostalgic myth of moonlight and magnolias. While it is easy to point out the ills that continue to plague historic sites, it is much more difficult to find remedies. Historic sites, particularly plantations, face fundamental contradictions between the need to attract tourist dollars to fund these very expensive enterprises and the need to portray accurate histories of slavery.