one of my favorite things in Brooklyn Nine Nine is when you can tell the writers were like “you know, Andre Braugher is an extremely talented Shakespearean actor who graduated top of his class at Juilliard…..what if we took advantage of that for our sitcom”
I just left a plantation tour in Louisiana. I have a lot to say…
SAY IT!
I honestly thought I knew everything about slavery. Not so.
The owner of this particular plantation had it built by slaves for 3 years. Every brick was handmade. Over 120,000 bricks on 2,000+ acres of land (this place was huge.) The clay used for the bricks came from the Mississippi River. The majority of the slaves are buried under the Levees and water. Some are buried with their Masters. Not allowed to live with them but could be dead with them.
Before you enter the house, there’s a list of slaves who lived here including their age and how much they were purchased for. 124 total. Some slaves were worth as little as $25. As young as 5 years old.
On this particular plantation, the owner was big on punishment…he used noise making neck restraints. Imagine three 4lb balls around your neck with bells inside. Children were restrained by ankle locks that connected between their ankles.
This was a sugar cane plantation, one the worst practices to involve slaves because of its danger. A lot of slaves were decapitated, amputees and killed from the fields and machinery. A lot of kids lost their lives creating sugar. Speaking of children, a child stood in the living room and operated the fan with a string while guests ate dinner. As young as 3 years old.
Here’s what shook me even further: Before the Civil War, a lot of slave owners were going in debt and could not afford their properties and were not producing enough cotton and sugar to maintain their lifestyles. Slaves were used as HUMAN CREDIT CARDS. Slaves were a guaranteed line of credit. You could get HALF of your property’s value depending on how many healthy and able slaves you owned.
My people were human credit cards and lines of credit to BANKS. We were property. We were labeled as equipment and nothing more.
There is no such thing as a good slave owner. They owned my PEOPLE and used them as checks and balances. This cycle continues with prison and brutality. I do not want to hear shit about “Why can only Black people say this or that?” I don’t want to hear shit about “we’re all human.”
And by the way, not one of those slaves are at rest. Those spirits were so alive, you could feel their presence, their pain and someday, their revenge.
The front of the house and yard. This plantation was huge. Just thinking about my ancestors tending to all this land…
SOME of the enslaved names, ages, race and purchase price.
The living room.
Interior.
The dining room. That piece hanging above the table is ORIGINAL to the house. That’s the fan that a slave as young as 3 years old had to operate manually with a string.
The view from the balcony in the main hallway. This is how they looked over the slaves while they worked in the yard.
*sigh* Names of the enslaved that occupied the shacks. Children included. Their names are written inside one of the shacks. I’m not sure if there are other names inside other shacks because I could only handle 2. After I saw the punishment equipment, I left.
Slave Shacks. These are NOT the original shacks. These were built to imitate them.
Slaves for Sale Ads.
The landscape of Slavery throughout the United States in 1860. JUST 1860. Let that sink in.
Note: The last time the home was OWNED by a Louisiana citizen was 1972. This is her original bedroom, her lipstick is STILL on the dresser. This is why the house has been updated since slavery times because it was occupied up until 1972. Regardless, this used to be where house slaves slept.
This really fuckin happened, don’t let white people tell you that it’s in the past & to let it go.
This is the Whitney Plantation outside New Orleans. It is the only plantation that’s dedicated to the enslaved people who lived and died there. The tour is horrifying and rightly so.
This is the Oak Alley Plantation.
Reblogging for education. 👨🏾🎓
DON’T EVER FORGET ! !
History isn’t just about the past. It’s about the trends, movements and evolution of the human race. The malignant force that subjugated and enslaved African Americans in the 1800s is alive and reasserting itself powerfully in the 21st century, as is the same malignant force that perpetrated the Holocaust. History is now.
My favorite part about the show The Magicians is that they set it up to look like this regular white boy was going to be a super amazing bad ass but he’s just scrapes by and they gave a person of color the most powerful set of magic abilities.
after years of being vaguely confused when I came across the measurement “a stick of butter” in recipes, today I learned that in the United States they sell butter in these skinny stick things:
it is literally a stick of butter. A STICK OF BUTTER.
i have literally never seen butter sold this way. each stick one only amounts to ½ a cup of butter AMERICANS PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT MY WHOLE LIFE WHEN I SAW THE PHRASE “A STICK OF BUTTER” IN RECIPES I WAS IMAGINING THIS:
THIS IS THE ONLY “STICK” I’D EVER SEEN BUTTER SOLD IN. I THOUGHT Y’ALL WERE THROWING FUCKIN’ POUNDS UPON POUNDS OF BUTTER INTO THINGS HOLY JESUS THE WORLD MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW FUCKIN CHRIST.
I love little foreign confusion things like this
we’re still throwing pounds of butter in shit just using more wrappers
Holding close the thick text of white Braille papers created for her to practice, Sperling-Milner said during one weekday rehearsal that “when I stand up here, I think about people who read before me and I want to do what they did,” she said. “I want to do what you’re supposed to according to Jewish law. If this could become my Torah it would mean a lot.”
On her special day, friends painted her left hand — she uses both hands to read Braille but is a lefty — with henna to look like a ‘yad,’ or pointer device sighted people use to read from an actual Torah without touching the sacred page.
Hi!! I'm Sydney :)
24, Pan, Jewish, anglophile, and bibliophile.
I blog whatever I want because it's my blog, and not yours.
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