If they had to use the third one in the japanese still resisted. Learn more about the Manhattan Project here on American History tv. Announcer each week, american and history tvs american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. Coming up next, we traveled west of new orleans to visit Whitney Wallace louisiana, to learn about the history of slavery in america. Ashley my name is ashley rogers. I am the director of Museum Operations at the whitney plantation. We are beginning our tour today in an historic church, which was built circa 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in helena, louisiana. In paulina, louisiana. The structure was donated about 10 years ago by the descendents of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870, two parcels of land, for the express purpose of building a house of worship. In the excel document, which we have from the courthouse, they named their congregation the antiyoke baptist congregation. That message of being against yolk or slavery is something important to our story here. This is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river. It is important in talking about lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. We like to start our to her here our tour of the whitney in this building so we can see what happened to people after freedom came. The whitney plantation is the only plantation in louisiana exclusively dedicated to telling the story of enslaved people. This land we are on now was historically known as habitation hideout, and our owner, John Cummings, purchased the property 15 years ago and has been restoring the original structures and also moving in buildings around the church. We had to build some things here, restore existing buildings, and bring this bring inn historic Historic Structures all of these things help us tell the story of slavery. When John Cummings bought the property in 1989, there were no original slave cabins. They had all been torn down. We had to move those in from elsewhere in louisiana. This structure, like i said, helps us round out that story of enslavement to after the civil war. We have some other buildings that were here that we have read that we have rebuilt. At the whitney plantation, we have a collection of statues created by an ohio artist, woodrow nash. He built these statues to represent people who were in slaved at the end of slavery and then later gave their testimony to the Work Progress Administration in the 1930s. We use the narratives of slaves taken in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on the site. These give life to who those people were. In the 1930s, when the wpa traveled across the south they , were talking to people who were in their 80s, 90s, even hundreds, who, when they were slaves, had just been children. At the highest end, maybe 15 when freedom came, but most of them were under the age of 10. This is to remind us who those voices are coming from, people who were talking about their experiences of slavery as children, oftentimes recalling things that happened to their parents and grandparents. Ins plantation was founded 1752 i a gentleman immigrant who by a gentleman immigrant who came in the company of john wall with his family. They sailed from france and came here. In 1752 when he founded this plantation, it was much smaller. It was a tract on which he grew rice and indigo as the main cash crops. Indigo was the significant cash crop of the land in the 18th century. He and his children continued planting indigo until the late 18th century, beginning of the 19th century. In 1795, a louisiana planter successfully granulated a crop of sugar in louisiana. Its a strange climate zone. Nobody had been able to take at the full way before that. Of someoneth the from haiti, he was able to granulate the crop. Right around the same time that the first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not a viable crop anymore. So, this plantation transitioned at some point after that. By about 1805, it was a sugar plantation, and it still is today. Sugar is a gigantic industry in south louisiana. All around us are historic cane fields that are now sent to the dixie crystals and domino sugar refineries. In plantation was started 1752, three successive generations ran the plantation, always with the labor of enslaved africans and african descendent people. Over the course of 100 plus years that they owned this land, there were many successful generations of people enslaved here, so the population would have shifted over time with Market Forces. The highest number we ever had recorded at one single time as enslaved people is 101, but we believe that is low. We think there were perhaps as enslaved atpeople the highest point. We have found records of 357 over the course of 100 plus years, but there would be a lot of people missing from that. Where we will start introducing that population is at our first memorial. Memorials were built to people enslaved in louisiana and on this land. This is the wall of honor. On this memorial, we recorded the names and basic information about 354 individuals we have been able to find who were enslaved on this land. This memorial is it moves through time, roughly chronologically. On the earlier side, people born in the 18th century, but we are missing an entire generation entire first generation of enslaved people here. We dont know anyones name who was enslaved here from the very beginning in 1752. All of these people were born after the founding of the plantation. This information comes mostly from sale documents. Peoples names were not always recorded when they were enslaved. If you look at things like census records, it will include a tally of how many men and women, but it will not tell you names. We have to look for those names in sale documents, in the city of new orleans there was a notary involved. So we go to the archives to find sales and purchases of people. All of the information we have here, this biographic information, is also related to selling. Where someone came from, how old they were, whether they came with children, the jobs they knew how to do, these are all things that would affect their price at sale. Louisiana had different laws than other states and territories in the United States. In louisiana, for a very long time, it was illegal to sell children away from parents before puberty. Later, it was codified to before the age of 10. You see things like this, here is agatha and she is being sold with the children. These people are in a lot, being sold together. We have basic information. There is not a lot this information can tell us, but we are able to tease out a little bit. One thing we notice is most of these people were born in africa. That is listed here, their places of origin, yet their names, like michelle, our re european names. We see a few spanish names as well. We know that the people who have these european derived names were not born in africa with those names. So that tells us something about cultural annihilation, the way peoples cultures were taken from them when they were sold into slavery in the new world. Slave traders often renamed people. Thats something that continued to happen throughout the course of slavery over the course of the 19th century. When people were sold from one plantation to another, their new to renameld choose them. In louisiana solomon northrup, was famously 12 years a slave they made a movie about it. Years aon he was 12 slave in louisiana under the name of platt, which was not his given name. Thats an experience a lot of people had and you can see that written in various narratives. Even though there is this problem of the names taken away from them, there are a few people who have african names. Here is a person named mingo, which is an african name. We also have someone named samba, and coacou. That means a male born on a wednesday. These are cultural names that tell us something about the circumstances of their birth. This is an islamic name, moussa, who was most likely a muslim. People who were traded from north africa were likely to have been exposed to islam through the arab worlds trading networks. This is something that tells us a Little Something about the religion and culture of the people who came to the new world as slaves. People who came to the americas enslaved were, in some cases muslim, in some cases catholic. The kingdom of congo was officially catholic by the 1500s. Some people would have been bringing their indigenous cosmology. That was especially in louisiana connection with the caribbean. A lot of ships made stops in the caribbean before coming to the United States, so there again, another chance for blending with west african and caribbean religions coming into louisiana. Its also important to note that these people were selected by slave traders for specific skills and traits that they had. Cameof the people enslaved to different parts of the u. S. As slaves for different reasons. A lot of it had to do with the crops they were familiar with growing. The first two slave ships that came to louisiana, the captains of those ships were under orders to find skilled indigo growers because they were trying to , establish an indigo economy here in louisiana, and the european traders and planters did not have the skills to grow indigo. It was not grown in europe. They had to find people who knew how to grow it and process it, complicated, and who knew how to build those skills. Same thing with rice. Rice growers were wrought into brought into louisiana and south carolina. You find this trading in africa going to specific markets in the United States to fill the plantations and to create that crop wealth. So, most of the people in the early years we can see were coming from west and central africa, a few people born in the caribbean coming from trading. Not too many people are coming internationally. Something that is important to note about the Movement Across the atlantic during the time of the atlantic slave trade is that the vast majority of settlement of the new world was african compulsory settlement. Of all the people who crossed from the old world to the new world until 1807, four out of five came from africa. The vast majority of movement was enslaved africans being forced on ships and across the atlantic. There are not good estimates about the actual number. The best historian who has done that work david altus, has come , to the figure of about 12. 5 Million People, not including people who didnt make it, people being driven from the died en route. O about 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. An enormous diaspora. Of that 12. 5 Million People, less than 5 came to the territories that became the United States. The vast majority of movement in Slave Society in the new world was into the caribbean and brazil. In the United States, we outlawed the International Slave trade in 1807, which did not fully cut it off, but its it significantly lowered that movement. People were still being pirated and smuggled in. The last slave ship arrived in the United States around 18591860, right up to the end of the civil war. It did caught cut off the majority of that trade. Around 1807, the land down here in the Mississippi River valley was just beginning to be developed. The Louisiana Purchase happens. 1807, you cant bring any more slaves into the United States. At the same time people are buying up large tracts of land and increasing their need for an reliance upon compulsory or slave labor, they did not have enslaved people coming from africa. We see that this changes the culture here. What happens is a very robust domestic slave trade develops in the wake of that. You can see on our wall here that there are a few people born on what is called the east coast, instead of in the old world or in the caribbean, and on the reverse side of the wall, you will see a large collection of them. So here, all of a sudden, all of these people are listed east coast. East coast is probably virginia. You can see that they came from an english owned plantation by their names, edwin,. , peary, claim, jack, tom, sam. They no longer have french or spanish names. You dont see many african names. We see people coming from english owned plantations. So, the domestic slave trade was an enormous movement of people across the country. In total, after the conclusion of the International Slave trade in 1807, 1 Million People were moved from the upper south, virginia, maryland, tennessee, south carolina, and North Carolina, and mostly centered in North Carolina and one million , people were moved down the river to louisiana, alabama, mississippi, where there were largescale plantations. To give you an idea of the difference in labor, i come from North Carolina. A lot of our plantations in North Carolina, tobacco plantations, tobacco is really awful for the soil. Fields have to remain fallow for a long time after growing tobacco. It cuts down on the amount of land you can work and a lot of the plantations there had 2550 slaves. Here in louisiana, 101 on this plantation, and thats on the smaller end. Very close by, there was a slave labor force of 750 people. You can see there was a greater need here for largescale labor. In the upper south, they had a Larger Population of women. They were encouraging family units, family growth. Part of the value of an enslaved woman was a reproductive attentional. Talked about this by using the word increase. If a woman was being talked about for trade all of that , reproductive potential belonged to the person who owns that woman, so there was a great value in encouraging the growth of families because you could make exponentially more money by selling so the majority of those people who came down from the upper south were in their late teens and early 20s. They would be born and raised on the plantations in the upper south, and most of them marched over land. Most of that movement was over land. Some of it was on a riverboat coming down the mississippi. Some of it was on boats coming down the atlantic seaboard into the gulf of mexico. But new orleans was the heart of that trade. So new orleans was tied to virginia and alexandria, virginia, and there was this constant flow of people coming down to new orleans to be spread out from the territories from there. So this is where you can see all of that happening. So on this plantation we have an oral history given to us by the descendants of one of the people enslaved here. It describes this process of being taken from the upper south and sold in the lower south. Anna is a girl who was born on the east coast, probably virginia. And the story about anna is she was purchased for this plantation to be a gift for the lady of the house, who had no children of her own. Anna, as the family has related to us, lived inside of the big house. And so, would have had an interesting kind of relationship with the family. People who lived in the big house who were slaves often had a strange kind of relationship that we cannot really understand today. She was a slave and would have been treated as such, but also would have been very close to the family as well. And the reason why that is because of her son, victor hydel. Victor hydel was born in the year 1835, when anna was a young woman. Her mistress had a brother, antoine, who who impregnated who impregnated anna. We dont know this was so long ago, we dont know if anna was raped by antoine, or if they had some kind of relationship. Although for enslaved women, there was no such thing as consent because they did not own their bodies. So victor was born of a hydel Family Member and an enslaved woman. Anna was a mixed race woman. Victor would have been called a quadroon, one quarter african descendent, three quarters european descendent. And enslaved by his own family. This is one instance that we know of, for certain, of all of these 354 people, over 100 years of ownership for the hydel family, we know there are many, many more people born here of enslaved mothers and white hydel fathers. And this kind of thing was common throughout the south. And those children born of those enslaved women would belong to their own family and would not necessarily be treated any better, and in many cases, we can read narratives of where the children were treated just a little bit worse because usually there was a white wife somewhere in there who understood where those children were coming from. So the separations between enslaved people and enslavers were not really there. There was a lot of mixing in terms of sexual assault, in terms of actual relationships. Certainly here in louisiana, a lot of free people of color existed here because of consensual relationships, where enslaved women would then be freed and given their own property. So in louisiana, its a very different class thats kind of created here. Free people of color and also people enslaved by their own families as well. This is called the midlowe hall l. A. In this memorial we have transcribed the names of 107,000 people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana through the year 1820. This is based on a database that the historian from new orleans put together, and that database ends in 1820. There is talk of extending it to 1865. But 107,000 people are inscribed here. We have just their first names. Again, these are mostly coming from sale documents. And what we have also done here is recorded little snippets from the works Progress Administration slave narrative. So in this area we allow people to walk through on their own and take a few minutes to reflect and read those names and those testimonials. This is the last memorial we visit before we move into the historic grounds of the plantation. This is called the field of angels. And we put this memorial here for 2200 children who died in died en nslaved slaved in st. John the ba