Nation's largest remaining antebellum plantation burns to the ground
Just a moment...
Sharing a video of the building while still aflame, Brad Gordon wrote: "If you don't understand why Black Americans are celebrating the symbolic dismantling of this monument to bondage and generational oppression — well, today, we simply don't care."
It was a resort, good riddance. If it was a museum/memorial it would be sad, but nah, it's still just a place for rich white people. Those southern resorts always gave me major ick.
Oh shit, Nottoway burned down? That fucking rules! Yeah it was just a resort and popular wedding destination for racists white people.
This is one story where I can definitely understand the mixed feelings.
It is rightly satisfying watching a house of horrors go up in flames, particularly so when you're descended from the people who were tortured and brutalized there.
At the same time, it's easier to teach history to people when they can interact with it using their own senses, and absent that, it's much much easier to forget it ever happened in the first place.
While your sentiment is a good one, from experience of living around such historical sites, most I have seen are operated by people like United Daughters of the Confederacy. The street really goes both ways with historical sites and while they can be used as grand gestures to show a horrible past in physical form to some who may see it, it can also be used as a propaganda tool of "lost glory" as the dsughters put it.
There is a town not too far from where I live that has a long history that has tons of white washed messages by the Daughters. Its frankly gross, but many people in that town don't bat an eye because those same historical buildings are used to re-enforce their view of the world not change their perspective.
I understand that.
I've already addressed your point in this thread.
Yeah I'm sure the racist assholes booking a weeding reception at that plantation were going there to reflect on its sad history
I am all for saving history no matter how good or bad it is or how uncomfortable it makes you.
That said this was just a place for rich fucks to get married in the bygone South. Fuck it let it burn, this monument to hate. I might feel different if it was used to teach people about how mankind can be so cruel as to profit off the blood and lives of others but it wasn't so good riddance.
This is an objective good. The only historical value was as a crime scene, not a goddamn wedding venue. How would we feel if skin-heads partied at Auschwitz, or the Saudi Royals threw shindigs at Ground Zero?
The heritage is hate.
the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.
This one is still around.
Personally, I think we should preserve history, good and bad.
Yea I like preserving history too. I don’t like people trying to re-write history and glorify slave holders. Unfortunately, the south can’t seem to manage one without the other, so this is a good thing. I say that as someone with a deep appreciation for American architecture.
I think buildings shouldn't all become museums, but rather repurposed depending on the needs of the living population. For example there's an old slaughterhouse in Toulouse, France, that was renovated into a modern art hall. Bordeaux, France has an old submarine base that became an immersive exhibition center.
In my opinion buildings aren't monoliths and should be used by the living, the dead who occupied them have no say in what they become
However, in this case, a resort for rich, presumably predominantly white , people, probably doesn't meet your criteria for "needs of the living population." It certainly doesn't meet mine.
But... Museums do serve a purpose for the living population. If they didn't invite visitors, then it would be a storehouse.
The submarine base thing is amazing, I've been to most of their shows for the past couple years, and my son loves them.
Basically it's a pair of rectangular warehouses, with a rectangular basin in each. You're in the dark with 360 projection on the walls, which reflects very nicely in the water of the basins, and some background music. There was one on space exploration, one on ancient Egypt etc...
Once when our son was on vacation we went to see the Klimt one after smoking fat joints it was fucking bomb.
Maybe now the ruins can be a museum actually dedicated to teaching and remembering the history of slavery in the US, rather than... weddings
Nothing of value was lost here.
And nothing of value was lost
So this wasn‘t some museum which educated people about this cruel part of american history? Because of this es the case, then this is a loss.
FYI in Germany, we don‘t burn down the monuments of our past, because this is the only shit which let‘s us remember how cruel people can be and that this doesn‘t repeat itself.
nah it was a destination wedding location. it was not used to disseminate information about the horror of slavery, it was used to promote disinformation about the lost cause of the south myth.
No, this is like if the nazi party rally grounds in Nürnberg were used as a venue for music festivals
Let’s keep it going, Sherman didn’t burn far enough
Even as a preservationist, I will say that this building won't be missed and good fucking riddance. They way it was being used was horribly disrespectful and disgusting.
Need the same to happen to those plantations that were converted to prisons. Without casualties of course because the last thing the world needs need is more needless deaths of poor black and brown people
Don't worry y'all there's another largest remaining antebellum plantation that can burn down now
Something something will rise again 😂
Hot take: This isn't uplifting at all. Burning this is like burning a labor camp, it reminds people of what life really was back then. It's important to preserve history, especially if it's dark, so we don't repeat it.
It wasn't a museum, or a living heritage site, it's where southern debutantes threw antebellum themed weddings.
It needed to be destroyed for what it is as much as what it was.
People took wedding photos and shit here. It acknowledged none of the hate and suffering caused. It's a good thing it's a pile of ashes now.
Agreed.
Burning this place helps erase the stories of the people who died there. It doesn't help to preserve them.