The Dark History Of Plantation Life

enslaved people working on a plantation
Adé Hennis
December 17, 2024

Some people want to describe the history of plantations as good for the economy and the enslaved people forced to work there. This kind of thinking is not just wrong. It distracts us from the brutal truth that life on plantations was horrific.

#1: The image of enslaved people singing from dawn to dusk while picking cotton and preparing meals is one of the many dangerous lies about plantation life. As Frederick Douglass noted before the Civil War, plantation owners hid their bloodstained hands behind myths like these.

#2: Many enslaved people didn’t even work on plantations. Enslaved labor wasn’t confined to plantations—it pervaded every part of society. Universities, small businesses, farms, and even churches were built and sustained by the backbreaking work of our enslaved ancestors.

#3: In the 1930s, garden clubs in Natchez, Mississippi, advertised plantations as romantic havens with “old-fashioned balls, negro spirituals, and flower gardens,” claiming they were places where “the Old South still lives.” This idyllic veneer deliberately ignored the brutal reality of enslaved people, reducing them to part of the scenery—or erasing them altogether.

It’s important to study and understand our stories from the “Old South,” because anti-Blackness  will continue to downplay historic atrocities like plantations to dismiss our suffering so that they can ease their own consciences. Our history must never be discounted.

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