Black Slave Owners

In amassing 19 states and the District of Columbia as places where members of the Slave Dwelling Project have spent nights at historic sites, the state of Florida proved to be elusive. My initial request to spend a night at Kingsley Plantation, a National Park Service site, was denied. The request was made at an early stage of the project when no National Park Service sites were included in the portfolio. Since that time, Magnolia Plantation, Belle Grove, and Booker T Washington are sites where we have now spent nights in the places that the enslaved slept on those properties. 

It would take a third party to make this sleepover at Kingsley Plantation happen. As fate would have it, the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation was looking for a keynote speaker for its 40th Anniversary Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. I was asked to serve in that capacity and, of course, I accepted. The conference theme was Stories, Structures & Soul. Conference organizer, Adrienne Burke thought that a sleepover at Kingsley Plantation could complement the offerings of the conference, so she did the coordination necessary to make it happen. This sleepover would involve coming in a day before the Florida conference officially started and participating in other aspects of the conference which included a panel discussion and providing the keynote speech.

I am often reminded that there were Black slave owners. These utterances usually come from someone White who is trying to absolve the White race of some of the blame for chattel slavery. I also often get Whites stressing Africans selling other Africans to slave traders. Anna Kingsley was indeed a Black slave owner, so on this trip, not only would I be sleeping at a historic site in Florida for the first time, but Kingsley Plantation would be my first sleepover at a site once owned by a Black female enslaver.

This sleepover came with all the bureaucracy expected from a National Park Service site.
• No pitching tents on the site for fear of disturbing potential archaeological findings
• Only a limited number of people participating in the sleepover

The original cabins were constructed of tabby, a type of concrete made of lime, shells, gravel, and stones, which dries very hard. Tabby was a building material commonly used on the Sea Islands. All the remaining cabins, of which there were many, only consisted of a few walls except for one, which had a roof. This would be the cabin of which five of us would spend the night. My only fear was that it had a dirt floor, and I don’t do well on dirt floors.

Sleeping here at Kingsley Plantation would not be my first encounter with slave cabins made of tabby, because I had already spent nights in the tabby ruins of Daufuskie Island and an intact cabin on Ossabaw Island.

I encountered something interesting when I arrived at the site. While in the office, a person called to book a tour but did not want the Park Rangers to talk about slavery while on the tour. That to me was not a surprise. What shocked me was that the person making the request was an African American female.

Despite the restrictions placed on the sleepover at the site, the public program that we put on for the public was well attended. It was a standing room only crowd of 50+ people who attended the lecture. Some of whom were visiting the site for the first time. The emotions of the people ran high during the question and answer session, with one White gentleman professing to strangers that he was the descendant of an enslaver. Confessions like this are becoming more common in these mixed groups. Confessions like this also often make the confessor an outcast among other family members and friends.

The staff at Kingsley had also managed to recruit one of Anna Kingsley’s descendant from Atlanta, Georgia to join us in the lecture, discussion, and sleepover. She arranged for a gentleman to meet her at the site to deliver her sleeping gear. That delivery included a tent that was pitched inside the cabin, that for me was a first. The delivery also included a tanning bed which I used to elevate myself off the dirt floor, eliminating my fear of any creepy crawlies that may have found a home on that dirt floor.

The conversation among the five of us lasted well into the night. The site is so remote that the competing noise of traffic was not a threat. Large birds roosting in the nearby forest was a noise that we would hear constantly through the night. The smoke from the fire worked wonders because mosquitoes and other insects were practically non-existent. The threatening rain, which was the product of a potential tropical depression in the Gulf, held off long enough for us to get it all in.

It would rain off and on for the rest of my time in Jacksonville. Between conference sessions, I got the opportunity to go on an adventure exploring a cabin which was believed to have been inhabited by enslaved people. My limited knowledge of slave cabins led me to believe that the cabin was built after slavery, but that is a matter for the experts to figure out.

Conclusion

Through all that I experienced while in Jacksonville, I still had to fulfill my ultimate reason for being there and that was to be the keynote speaker for the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation 40th Anniversary Conference. That presentation was not much different than the one I give elsewhere. The difference was, I got to issue a challenge.

In 2019, the Slave Dwelling Project will conduct its 6th annual conference somewhere near Jamestown, Virginia. The reason for this location is that the first documented Africans enslaved in this nation came to Jamestown in 1619. If St. Augustine proclaims that they are the oldest city in this nation, then they must also own the fact they enslaved people in this nation prior to 1619. My challenge was that Floridians, more specifically, people from St. Augustine should be well represented at the 2019 conference to present the evidence of the slavery that existed in America’s oldest city.

I will keep you apprised.

Adrienne Burke

I’ve been reading and learning about Joe and the Slave Dwelling Project over the past several years with great interest. As a historic preservation planner (and proud history buff), I am always excited to see people engaging in new and relevant ways with our history, our historic places, and spaces, and bringing people to preservation that might not otherwise be involved. This is especially significant around sites related to underrepresented people – African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women, LGBTQ people, etc. As a preservation movement, we have to do a better job of telling everyone’s story and Joe, through his work, is a real leader in that effort.

I’m a Board member of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation and volunteered to chair our 2018 conference in Jacksonville. I had a glimmer of hope that we could somehow coordinate a Slave Dwelling Project visit to Kingsley Plantation and also have Joe participate as a keynote for our conference. Starting back in summer 2017, we started to turn that hope into reality. I’m very grateful to the National Park Service for working with us to bring Joe for his first official stay in Florida with SDP, and to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and numerous private sponsors for enabling us to do so.

As the event drew nearer, the weather looked like it wasn’t going to cooperate. Kingsley is off the beaten path in Jacksonville, and it was a Tuesday night. I was worried about attendance having worked so hard for almost a year with Joe and NPS to make this happen. But the rain largely held off, and the people started to arrive. The prior rain actually made a Florida May evening pleasantly cool and helped keep mosquitos away. We relocated the event to the barn space, which ultimately filled up.

I am thrilled to have had so many people come for what turned out to be a great overview of Joe’s other visits, but most importantly, an honest, emotional, truth-telling conversation. Even in a crowd of fifty plus people, the space made it feel intimate. We heard from black and white, men and women, young and not as young. We talked about pain, past and present, the legacy of our ancestors, and injustices still perpetuated because we haven’t as a country dealt with our past.

I have conflicted feelings about sharing too much of the conversation. Another visitor said they wish it could have been captured on video. On one hand, I agree, I wish everyone could see and hear how powerful it was. On the other hand, that intimacy and vulnerability might disappear or be tarnished if people felt exposed. I’ve settled on the side of not disclosing too much of it, also because many of the stories and feelings relayed are not my story to tell, and not an experience to which I can speak. I was and continue to be incredibly moved by those who chose to speak that night. I realized then that Joe’s work is so much more than a preservation or public history event. It’s a rare opportunity to commune with people, to be real and honest in a way that people don’t do in any other setting I can think of, and have conversations that our country so desperately needs at this moment.

I am amazed I had the opportunity to spend the night in the cabin with Joe, Peri, Tim, and Felicia. I still am having a hard time articulating what that was like. I’m not a night person, but I was wide awake most of the night. I couldn’t shut my brain down, thinking about the lives of the people who lived in that building and their families, and also thinking about the evening’s conversation and what part I play, as a white female, in systemic issues in our country related to race. I thought about the progress that has been made, in the sense that we could conduct such an event with African American and white men and women together in one cabin and openly talk about race at a National Park Service plantation site, but how much progress remains to be seen. I thought about what I can do in my professional and personal life to continue these conversations and hopefully somehow make a difference. I also had less deep thoughts, wondering what natural bug repellents people must have used in the 18th and 19th century, as I got up at 3:30 am to spray myself down with more bug spray.

Personally, this experience was more than just an event I helped plan. It will continue to shape me, and my work. And I firmly believe that we meet people for a reason and at the right time. Meeting Peri, in particular, was such a remarkable turn of events, because of her connection to not only the Kingsley family but the Lewis family of American Beach. American Beach is on the south end of Amelia Island in Nassau County and was founded as a beach community for African Americans during segregation. I just started working in planning for Nassau County two months before this event and knew when I started I wanted to help work on protections for American Beach. And Tim grew up in western Nassau County, and we just started a heritage preservation planning effort for that area. And his brother works in the same office building as I do! I don’t think these were coincidences.

Joe’s session at our Trust conference was fantastic. People were riveted by his work and stories of his visits; I feel confident in saying that for many attendees, this was the first they heard of his work and the places he has visited, and the first time they had thought about historic preservation’s role in telling the story of slavery and enslaved people. It was a shift in direction for the Florida Trust, as we work to emphasize the relevance of preservation in Florida and in all people’s lives.

I look forward to staying connected with Peri, Tim, and of course, Joe and the Slave Dwelling Project, and doing my part to help continue to change the narrative.