Menu
Idea

plantations

218
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Gaineswood Plantation mansion.

Plantation Tourism Continues to Raise Questions

One plantation tourist manager said covering slavery would be like “trying to tell the story at Disneyland of how poorly the employees at Disney are treated.”
by Sara Rimer, Daniel R. Biddle via Equal Justice Initiative on December 6, 2024
Liberian workers at the Firestone Plantation carrying buckets of latex in buckets on their shoulders.

The Human Price of American Rubber

Segregated lives of pride and peril on Firestone's Liberian plantations.
by Gregg Mitman via The Disappearing Spoon on December 7, 2023
“Words Have Power” exhibit displayed at Fort Pulaski National Monument.

Why I Haven’t Embraced the Terms “Forced Labor Camp” and “Enslaved Labor Camp” in My Work on Slavery

“Forced labor” conflates different forms of labor throughout history and minimizes the uniquely brutal conditions of chattel slavery.
by Nick Sacco via Exploring the Past on June 2, 2023
Calculating machines.

Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.
by Meredith Whittaker via Logic on May 25, 2023
Old millhouse down a garden path.

Reclaiming a North Carolina Plantation

On a former plantation in Durham, a land conservancy and two determined sisters are pioneering a model for providing land to Black gardeners and farmers.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Garden & Gun on April 24, 2023
Illustration of African American Civil War soldier examining newspaper by torchlight as a Black family watches.

On War and U.S. Slavery: Enslaved Black Women’s Experiences

Enslaved women’s experiences with war must be extended to include the everyday warfare of slavery.
by Karen Cook Bell via Black Perspectives on November 7, 2022

Modern-day Culture Wars are Playing Out on Historic Tours of Slaveholding Plantations

Romanticized notions of Southern gentility are at odds with historical reality as the lives, culture and contributions of the enslaved are becoming integral on tours.
by Kelley Fanto Deetz via The Conversation on December 6, 2021
A former slave cabin, surrounded by tourists.

‘These Are Our Ancestors’: Descendants of Enslaved People Are Shifting Plantation Tourism

At three plantations in Charleston, S.C., Black descendants are connecting with their family’s history and helping reshape the narrative.
by Ariel Felton via Retropolis on October 1, 2021
Inscription on Gullah-Geechee gravestone

Hilton Head Island— Haunted by Its Own History

Historical traces of racism and exclusion remain on the island. It’s just that new residents can’t—or won’t—read them.
by Alexa Hazel via Public Books on July 20, 2021

A Romantic Union? Thoughts on Plantation Weddings from a Photographer/Historian

Plantations are not "charming" or "tranquil" wedding venues. They were gruesome labor camps profiting off of enslaved labor.
by John R. Legg via National Council on Public History on February 24, 2020
Workers on a pineapple plantation.

In Hawaiʻi, Plantation Tourism Tastes Like Pineapple

The Dole pineapple plantation has a destructive history of transforming the Hawaiian Islands—something that continues today in the tourism industry.
by Mallory Huard via Edge Effects on November 12, 2019

Dear Disgruntled White Plantation Visitors, Sit Down

Michael W. Twitty on the changing tides of plantation interpretation.
by Michael W. Twitty via Afroculinaria on August 9, 2019
Art installation, "Public Soil Memory for the Plantationocene" at the Sandy Spring Museum

How the Soil Remembers Plantation Slavery

What haunts the land? When two artists dig up the tangled history of slavery and soil exhaustion in Maryland, soil memory reveals ongoing racial violence.
by R. L. Martens, BII Robertson via Edge Effects on March 28, 2019

How Ceiling Fans Allowed Slaves to Eavesdrop on Plantation Owners

The punkahs of the Antebellum era served many purposes.
by Eve Kahn via Atlas Obscura on May 14, 2018
Black family sitting around log cabin, possibly in Florida, 1892.

Plantations Practiced Modern Management

Slaveholding plantations of the 19th century used scientific management techniques—and some applied them more extensively than factories.
by Caitlin C. Rosenthal, Scott Berinato via Harvard Business Review on September 1, 2013
A group of indigenous Pacific Islanders forced to work on a sugar plantation, with a white overseer in the background.

How ‘Blackbirders’ Forced Tens of Thousands of Pacific Islanders Into Slavery After the Civil War

The decline of Southern industries paved the way for plantations in Fiji and Australia, where victims of “blackbirding” endured horrific working conditions.
by Shoshi Parks via Smithsonian on December 5, 2024
Charred ruins of Lahaina following the fire.

After Wildfires Destroyed Lahaina, the Battle to Restore an Ancient Ecosystem Will Shape Its Future.

A wetland restoration project is bringing hope to Maui residents who want to honor Lahaina’s history and return water to the town after last year’s fires.
by Reis Thebault via Washington Post on July 11, 2024
Harriet Tubman.

The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman

A new book conveys in dramatic detail what America’s Moses did to help abolish slavery. Another addresses the love of God and country that helped her do so.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on June 24, 2024
Combahee River.

Harriet Tubman and the Second South Carolina Volunteers Bring Freedom to the Combahee River

The story of how Harriet Tubman led 150 African American soldiers to rescue over 700 former slaves freed five months earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation.
by Edda Fields-Black via History Uncut on June 19, 2024

40 Acres and a Lie

We compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land—only to have it returned to their enslavers.
by Alexia Fernández Campbell, April Simpson, Pratheek Rebala via Mother Jones on June 13, 2024
A print titled "Heroes of the Colored Race," centered on portraits of Blanche Bruce, Frederick Douglas, and Hiram Revels.

Slavery, Capitalism, and the Politics of Abolition

"The Reckoning," Robin Blackburn’s monumental history, offers a dizzying account of the politics behind slavery's rise and fall.
by Alec Israeli via Jacobin on May 19, 2024
Members of the Mason family, St. Inigoes, Maryland, circa 1890–1909.

How Bondage Built the Church

Swarns’s book about a sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is the legacy of resistance.
by Tiya Miles via New York Review of Books on May 2, 2024
A field of cotton.

What a Series of Killings in Rural Georgia Revealed About Early 20th-Century America

On the continuing regime of racial terror in the post-Civil War American South.
by Earl Swift via Literary Hub on April 25, 2024
Boiling House at the Sugar Plantation Asunción, Cuba, 1857.

Slavery Was Crucial for the Development of Capitalism

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.
by Robin Blackburn, Owen Dowling via Jacobin on April 10, 2024
"Soulsville" mural in Memphis, Tennessee.

Capitalism and (Under)Development in the American South

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Aeon on April 2, 2024
A black and white drawing of Julia Ann Chinn.

Tenuous Privileges, Tenuous Power

Amrita Myers paints freedom as a process in which Black women used the tools available to them to secure rights and privileges within a slave society.
by Keisha N. Blain, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers via Public Books on March 19, 2024
Mural of Harriet Tubman with arm outstretched

Harriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War

Edda L. Fields-Black sets out to restore the Combahee River Raid to its proper place in Tubman’s life and in the war on slavery.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on February 23, 2024
A young Black girl picking cotton.

Rings of Fire

Arsenic cycles through racism and empire in the Americas.
by Jayson Maurice Porter via Distillations on February 1, 2024
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
by Alena Pirok via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
The Varner-Hogg Plantation House, Brazoria County, Texas.

The Texas Historical Commission Removed Books on Slavery From Plantation Gift Shops

An agency spokesperson claimed that the move had nothing to do with politics. Internal emails show otherwise.
by Steven Monacelli via Texas Monthly on December 7, 2023
View More
30 of
218

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History