We Hear You, Ancestors: Fire Decimates Nottoway Plantation In Louisiana

On Thursday, flames engulfed the Nottoway Plantation in Iberville Parish, Louisiana—one of the largest remaining antebellum mansions in the South. The fire raged for hours, ultimately reducing the 165-year-old structure to ashes. And while local officials mourn what they describe as a “cornerstone of our tourism economy,” many of us—especially those descended from the enslaved—felt something else entirely: release.

The ancestors are speaking. Can you hear them?

To be clear, no one celebrates destruction for destruction’s sake. But what burned that day wasn’t just timber and brick. It was the rotted heart of a narrative that has too often romanticized the horrors of slavery and the brutal systems that upheld it.

Let’s be honest: plantations are crime scenes. Period. 

Nottoway, with its opulent architecture and manicured grounds, stood as a monument to wealth built on human suffering. Constructed in 1859 by John Hampden Randolph, the plantation was home to 155 enslaved Black people. Their labor, their pain, their stolen lives—this is the untold story behind every chandelier and Corinthian column.

So when I see headlines describing the mansion as a “symbol of the grandeur and the deep complexities of our region’s past,” I can’t help but ask: for whom?

Because for descendants of the enslaved, grandeur is not what comes to mind when we hear “plantation.” We don’t see elegant ballrooms or bridal photo ops. We see sweat and scars. We hear the crack of whips. We feel the weight of our ancestors’ chains.

That’s the real legacy of Nottoway—and of every plantation that still stands in the American South.

The fire that reduced Nottoway to rubble has been called a tragedy by some, but it may be closer to a reckoning. As crews battled flames that started in the attic and spread throughout the four-story structure, we were reminded of what still smolders under the surface of this country: a refusal to fully reckon with our past. To mourn the loss of a plantation as if it were a sacred relic is to ignore the truth of what it represents.

It’s important to note that Nottoway wasn’t just a historic home. In recent years, it had become a luxury resort, a wedding venue, and a so-called “educational site.” But let’s be real—what kind of education sanitizes the blood-soaked ground it stands on? How many of those destination weddings ever acknowledged that vows were being exchanged where children were torn from their mothers, where people were sold like livestock?

This isn’t history. It’s historical revisionism with a fresh coat of white paint and a gift shop.

We hear a lot about “preserving heritage” and “respecting history” when it comes to places like Nottoway. But what’s being preserved? Whose heritage is being honored? Because if we’re not honoring the memory of the enslaved—if we’re not telling their stories—then all we’re doing is glamorizing atrocity.

And let me be crystal clear: to romanticize the antebellum South is to be completely absent of the pain it inflicted on millions of Black bodies. It is to choose nostalgia over justice. It is to drape horror in Spanish moss and call it culture.

In a Facebook post, Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle wrote, “While its early history is undeniably tied to a time of great injustice, over the last several decades it evolved into a place of reflection, education, and dialogue.”

Respectfully, reflection without truth is denial. Dialogue without accountability is noise.

We don’t need more places that “evolve.” We need places that acknowledge. That name the horror for what it was. That center the voices of the descendants, not just the dollars of the tourists.

Because the truth is, Nottoway never belonged to Louisiana’s tourism economy. It belonged to the people who built it with their bare hands. The people who suffered there. The people who never got to leave.

So no, I don’t mourn the loss of a plantation. I mourn the lives that were lost in bondage. I mourn the continued erasure of their humanity in service of southern gentility and mint julep mythology.

As the ashes settle along the Mississippi River, let us not be so quick to rebuild what was never ours to begin with. Let us sit in this moment. Let us listen to what the ancestors are saying.

Because sometimes, the most sacred act is letting something burn.

Burn, baby, burn.

Not out of vengeance. But out of truth. Out of liberation. Out of the need to finally, fully, bury the lie that plantations were anything less than sites of American terror.

We hear you, ancestors. Loud and clear.

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