I try to teach history in a very human way, creating illustrations with empathy instead of criticism or aggression. This is filled with challenges because the history I am teaching is complicated and has been falsely taught for decades. Places like ours have, for generations, contributed to a distorted narrative. This often included romanticizing the homes and pretty furniture while minimizing the human cost that made it possible. That history of misrepresentation is real, and it is the reason skepticism toward sites like ours still exists today. We are working to change that, but rebuilding trust takes time and unfortunately I have never been called a patient person.

One of the houses I work at, Carnton, is 200 years old this year. Recently, criticism was directed at Carnton for not using the word “plantation” in our name, with the assumption that this choice reflects an attempt to soften or obscure the reality of slavery. I understand where that concern comes from. But the issue we are trying to address is not whether slavery is acknowledged, it is how narrowly it has been defined in public education. 

The criticism came as the state of Tennessee was passing a resolution to honor Carnton as a historic site telling a complex history. Without ever visiting our site, Rep. Justin Jones led a charge to challenge this honor because of alleged attempts by the Battle of Franklin Trust to “white wash” history and “romanticize slavery” by not using the word “plantation” in our name. Every cell in me is trying hard not to be angry at this callous misguided assessment. It is especially upsetting because Rep. Jones falls on my own side of the political spectrum and I’ve rooted for his success so many times. This post is a direct response to his criticism, but it isn’t a criticism of Jones himself. His feelings towards Carnton are not unique to him and have been cultivated after decades of poor historical interpretation and dismissal. Over the years we have met countless guests who feel the same apprehension and anger, but we have also witnessed those same guests embrace the healing of having their stories finally told with truth. I’m writing this, hoping that he may read it. But most importantly, I’m hoping he will visit Carnton with an open heart and give us the chance to undo the damage which has resulted in his frustrations being aimed at a site that has led the way in bringing stories of the enslaved to the forefront, even with intense criticism from people who do not want us to do so. 

Loss of trust is a difficult thing to regain. This past weekend we had a booth at a local street festival to sell t-shirts and raise awareness for our site. We had a soldier uniform demonstrations and an exhibit honoring the Forget-Me-Not Art Club. The ladies in the booth next to us, selling seed bird feeders, were up front honest with us that they were at first unhappy to be stuck next to us. One of them said to me “and that’s on us…you guys are doing good work.” The seed ladies are not alone and they never would have visited a site like ours. But this weekend, they listened and they changed their minds. The best you can ever hope of anyone is that they continue to learn more and do better. 

We have come far in our education, but there is still more work to do. For the next generation to continue to learn more and do better we need to establish new foundations, accurate foundations, to our education system. First and foremost we need a better understanding of what a plantation was. A plantation was not called a plantation because it used enslaved labor; it was defined by large scale cash crop production: cotton, sugar, tobacco…etc. However, modern day minds define plantations as large scale farms with slave labor, slavery being the defining criteria. Slavery did exist on plantations, but it was not limited to those spaces. Slavery extended into cities, churches, small farms, and businesses. Enslaved people were rented out, hired by those who did not own them. At age 17, Calfurnia Carter was rented out for $5.85 cents, which was less than 10 cents a day. Not only was it possible to rent a human, it was affordable. Slaves were forced into labor that built roads, towns, and infrastructure still in use today. When we teach slavery as something that only happened on plantations, we unintentionally minimize its reach. 

Second we need to desegregate History.  It is the last place segregation is still socially accepted. This directly results in white people thinking Black History isn’t their history or didn’t impact them. To desegregate, we need to restructure and deliberately cultivate an educational system with a distinct objective to show how slavery was not confined to plantations, and learning that it was has distorted how we understand our own connection to this complex history.

Limited framing has consequences. It allows people the opporunity to distance themselves from the institution with statements like “my ancestor was a Confederate, but he didn’t own slaves” or “my family was too poor to own slaves.”  But slavery was not an isolated system reserved for wealthy landowners, it was woven into the economic and social fabric of everyday life. Understanding that truth does not lessen the brutality of plantation life; it expands our awareness of how deeply embedded the system was. Enslaved people built blocks of buildings and communities of roads. In the early 1840’s Susanna McKissack, of Maury County, TN, rented her twenty-two year old enslaved woman to a road committee to help build a road that I still drive on every day. A TWENTY-TWO year old girl, not a big strong man. That’s a thought that never leaves your mind. But when someone says to me, “my family was too poor to own slaves” they do not see that their ancestors were impacted by slavery, since they didn’t own a plantation or slaves. Our unintentionally misguided education system created that mindset. 

The harsh conditions of life within the plantation system are not diminished by understanding slavery was everpresent and all around our ancestors. Houses like Carnton have become symbols of slavery, because they are big and in your face and the white people who lived in them profited off of the forced labor of black people. They have become a clear and tangible reminder of a society built on white supremacy, a supremacy that infiltrated the post war south with violence. The reverberations of this violence can still be felt today. And although, the most harsh aspects of slavery did not happen in those homes, the homes are a product of the wealth attained by the harshness happening elsewhere on the property. 

Plantations were often hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres large. The houses that have survived are usually on the minutest section of that property, most not even including the acreage where the slave dwellings were located. The land through the years being sold off a little at a time, with old structures being demolished and new structures being built. The barns, gins, mills and fields that comprised the plantations where enslaved blacks labored, suffered and survived are now gone. In their place have been built communities, churches, schools and parks. Because humans survive and we heal and we move forward. Knowing that somewhere in Mississippi a black child plays soccer in a field where children who looked like him 175 years ago would have toiled is profound. Humans are incredibly resilient.

To the seed ladies who sat next to us, thank you for listening even through your initial doubts. I invite you to come visit. Hear our story. Bring your friends. Help us change minds. To Rep. Justin Jones, I truly believe your intentions were good. We are on the same side. Your criticism was jarring to hear, not because we aren’t used to criticism, but because it so often comes from those who want the story of slavery suppressed. We want the same thing you do. We are committed to telling the full story, honestly and completely. Trust is hard to win back once it’s lost, but we are trying, one visitor at a time. Because it matters that we continue to learn more and do better. And when we begin to understand just how far slavery reached, we start to see it differently. Not as something confined to one place, but something that shaped the world around us. The road we are driving on was built, in part, by a twenty-two-year-old girl. Her name was Susan.