Panel Discussions and Courtyard Conversations, Louisiana Style

 

Sleep, a condition of body and mind which recurs for several hours every night.   Sleeping is an action that everyone placed on God’s green earth can do.  Sleeping denotes a time of peace and serenity, but how could those qualities be found in a slave dwelling?

I often joke that I get paid to sleep around.  It was this simple act of sleeping in slave dwellings that made the Slave Dwelling Project so compelling.  I still encounter those who will not willingly dare sleep in a slave dwelling. But what if that opportunity to sleep in these historic places should go away?  That question was put to the test when I recently visited Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. 

I got excited when  Lily Elkins, Education and Outreach Manager of the Beauregard – Keyes House in New Orleans contacted me.  On that initial phone call conversation, Lily struck me as young, ambitious, and knowledgeable.  Cautiously, I know young and enthusiastic employees always have decision-makers of whom to answer.   These decision-makers may not be as eager as my contacts are in honoring the enslaved Ancestors.

As a Civil War reenactor and a former Park Ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument, I’m aware of the actions of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. He ordered the first shot of the Civil War fired onto Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC. His history alone would justify me spending a night in the historic home. The dilemma is that Beauregard lived there after the Civil War.

Frances Parkinson Keyes (July 21, 1885 – July 3, 1970)  was an American author who wrote about her life as the wife of a United States Senator.  She set her novels in New England, Louisiana, and Europe. 

Exciting, but like Beauregard, Keyes’s significance to the house was after the Civil War.

More impressive to me was that Joseph LeCarpentier, an auctioneer peddling human flesh of enslaved people, built the house.

I’ll come back to the Beauregard – Keyes because first, I had to take a detour.

Baton Rouge

In 2017, I spent a night at Oakley Plantation at Audubon State Historic Site in St. Francisville, Louisiana.  My host was Fairleigh Jackson, Executive Director of Preserve Louisiana.  I met Fairleigh at a National Trust for Historic Preservation Conference in Houston, Texas.  Fairleigh made me aware of her desire to bring the Slave Dwelling Project to Louisiana.  I made her aware of some of the challenges she might face in making the Slave Dwelling Project visit to Louisiana a reality.  Despite those challenges, Fairleigh made the visit happen. 

Fairleigh found out I was coming to New Orleans for the Beauregard – Keyes house event and insisted I take a detour to Baton Rouge.  So it was on for me to participate in a panel discussion titled: Narratives in Historic Places & Spaces.  We based the panel discussion on recent complaints from some who visit historic sites and get upset when they hear about the slavery interpreted at those sites.  Their complaints have gone viral. The panelist included Lilly Elkins from the Beauregard Keys House, Ray Berthelot Chief of Interpretive Services (Parks Program Manager) at the State of Louisiana, Office of State Parks, and me.
 

Maxine Crump of Dialogue on Race, Louisiana, moderated the session.  Maxine is a descendant of one of the 272 enslaved people sold by Georgetown University to keep that institution solvent.

Beauregard – Keyes

When Lily and I started the planning process for a visit to the Beauregard – Keyes House, we were both excited about a sleepover at the site. About two months before the event is when I found out that the sleepover portion of the visit would not happen.  Something to do with the condition of the building and liability.  I am now suddenly reminded of the challenges that I told Fairleigh she would face when trying to bring the Slave Dwelling Project to Louisiana for the first time. 

We pressed on with the planning of a courtyard conversation and the panel discussion.

New Orleans is a lot like Charleston, SC. You can marvel at the architecturally significant houses from the streets and have no clue that there are slave dwellings in the rear.  Like Charleston, these dwellings are used for many things, added living space, man caves, she sheds, rental space, storage space, etc., etc.

My tour of the mansion was what I expected, a place where enslavers lived a lavish life while they stole labor from those they enslaved.  We took a tour of the attic where it is possible that enslaved people once inhabited.  We toured the bottom portion of the slave dwelling, which is now a construction zone. The walk through the slave dwelling verified that sleeping there was not feasible.

The most amazing thing to me was the fact that the Ursuline Nuns once owned the property where the house sits.  They own a convent across the street from the house that still stands today.  This convent is a testimony that religious institutions condoned slavery.  The Nuns themselves enslaved people. As an interpreter in this space, I could do a lot with that information and vantage point.

The courtyard conversation proved exciting and challenging.  There were teachers, librarians, staff members, museum employees retirees, mostly from New Orleans.  What impressed me most was the incoming president of the board of directors for the Beauregard -Keyes house was there, erasing doubt about support for Lily’s efforts.

The conversation was going swimmingly until one participant said, “It wasn’t free labor, because the enslavers incurred expenses.” While that statement is true from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it was unpopular with this audience. So unpopular that I had to call a time out and ask everyone to exhale. I have conducted many of these conversations at historic sites, and this was only the second time that this action was necessary.  The other time was at Monticello and the participants debating the relationship between President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings (consensual or nonconsensual). Luckily for us in both situations, everyone calmed down and went back to their corners.

We paused around 11:00 pm and gave those who wanted to call it a night a chance to depart the property.  About ten of us stayed, and we carried on the conversation to around midnight.  Normally, at this time, those staying the night, retreat to their spaces and crawl into a sleeping bag or the like.  No one would do that on this property on this night. I retreated to a hotel in the next block with wi-fi and a comfortable bed.

The panel discussion the next day was standing room only. The panelists: Kathe Hambrick, Founder at River Road African American Museum; Phebe Hayes, a retired professor and dean at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who grew up in the parish and Erin Greenwald Vice President of Content at Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and me. Again, placed among scholars who defended the need for a changing narrative that includes the lives of all who inhabited historic spaces, I held my own.  We discussed the challenges and rewards of interpreting slavery.  We discussed the push back we get from those who would much rather hear only about the enslavers. The setting for this panel discussion was perfect: the ballroom of the Beauregard – Keyes House, built for Joseph LeCarpentier, an auctioneer.

The evening concluded with Lily Elkins, me, and others sitting on the front porch of the Beauregard – Keyes House. We had dinner there as we watched the street come to life after dark.  We witnessed a wedding which culminated with a parade. Walking and carriage tours increased, many of which had ghostly themes.   It seems like the Ursuline Nuns and the Beauregard – Keyes House are great subjects of ghost stories.

We talked about the next visit to New Orleans and building on what we’ve started. The fact is, chattel slavery was commonplace in antebellum New Orleans. There are lots of places to spend nights in former slave dwellings in New Orleans, that is if you don’t mind being labeled renter, tenant or guest.

Let’s Stop Venerating People Who Used Force and Oppression

Beauregard-Keyes House

Catherine Carey 10/11/19

I walked into a sweet courtyard in the French Quarter. Folding chairs were set out around a tinkling fountain behind a slave trader’s big house facing the street and the small narrow slave dwelling behind it. What an enormous contrast.

The enslaver’s townhouse occupies a large lot. Two sets of stair sweep up to the porch. A pitched roof supported by four fancy columns covers the porch. Large windows and a double door surrounded by glass open to the porch. From the courtyard behind the house, double stairways sweep up to the porch. The doors onto the back porch are topped by fanlights. These details tell a story: this is the home of a powerful, wealthy man.

The slave dwelling above the original kitchen faces the courtyard. Small windows and narrow doors face a porch. Plain, slender columns support the porch roof. These details tell a story: this is a workspace.

The conversation began with the people introducing themselves and saying why they chose to attend. Listening to Joseph McGill I heard about his mission and felt renewed.

I told the group I traveled from Baltimore to New Orleans because it was a common domestic slave trade route. What I wanted was to sense what it felt like for the people shipped from the moderate Mid-Atlantic climate to the heat and humidity of New Orleans. I felt good sitting in my third conversation with the Slave Dwelling Project.

Many people gathered around the fountain were museum staff and docents or people involved in historic preservation and research. Most of them told us they wanted to learn. I felt compassion and frustration. When my feelings settled I expressed my need. “I hear you saying learn, learn, learn. I need you to talk, talk, talk.” To me, historic homes like the Beauregard-Keyes House have a unique opportunity. Historic homes help us feel the history of everyone who lived before us. Visitors get to imagine what life was like. I pointed to the big house and said, “You get to tell us the story of the people who lived in the big fancy home.” Pointing to the slave dwelling I said, “and the people who made the wealth and fancy lives possible.”

I want the board of directors at Beauregard-Keyes and other museums to support their staff in learning to handle sadness and anger. These feelings are felt by the staff and visitors alike when they talk about the history of slavery in the United States. While the fear about telling visitors things that make them feel bad is understandable, the opportunity to share the full history of the United States is more compelling to me. Let’s embrace history and stop venerating people who used force and oppression.