Page 80 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

Men working among thousands of barrels of sugar in New Orleans in 1902. via the Library of Congress. Right: From Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Images.

Coleman Correctional Center about home to dozens of once-thriving and placed on pikes throughout the said, ‘‘the currency has been the dis-

15 miles back along the way. ‘‘You sugar plantations; Marmillion’s region. Based on historians’ esti- tortion of the past.’’

passed a dump and a prison on plantation and torture box were just mates, the execution tally was nearly The landscape bears witness and
your way to a plantation,’’ she said. a few miles down from Whitney. twice as high as the number in Nat corroborates Whitney’s version of

‘‘These are not coincidences.’’ The museum also sits across the Turner’s more famous 1831 rebel- history. Although the Coleman jail

The Whitney, which opened five river from the site of the German lion. The revolt has been virtually opened in 2001 and is named for an

years ago as the only sugar-slavery Coast uprising in 1811, one of the redacted from the historical record. African-American sheriff ’s deputy

museum in the nation, rests square- largest revolts of enslaved people But not at Whitney. And yet tourists, who died in the line of duty, Rogers
ly in a geography of human detritus. in United States history. As many as Rogers said, sometimes admit to her, connects it to a longer history of

The museum tells of the everyday 500 sugar rebels joined a liberation a white woman, that they are warned coerced labor, land theft and racial

struggles and resistance of black army heading toward New Orleans, by hotel concierges and tour opera- control after slavery. Sugar cane

people who didn’t lose their digni- only to be cut down by federal troops tors that Whitney is the one misrep- grows on farms all around the jail, Left: Underwood & Underwood,

ty even when they lost everything and local militia; no record of their resenting the past. ‘‘You are meant to but at the nearby Louisiana State

t sits on the west bank of the

else. I actual plans survives. About a hun- empathize with the owners as their Penitentiary, or Angola, prison-

Mississippi at the northern edge dred were killed in battle or executed guests,’’ Rogers told me in her office. ers grow it. Angola is the largest

of the St. John the Baptist Parish, later, many with their heads severed In Louisiana’s plantation tourism, she maximum-security prison by land
74