Rant Against Plantation Guide

**to be clear, I do not support the implied points below in #1-5. Those were the points Guide was making. For example, they don't like Lincoln because he waged war and ruined their way of life. I argue that Lincoln was stellar.**

I'm feeling rather huffy right now. Hopefully I can keep from offending any harmless Southerners who happen to be reading our blog. (Please feel free to comment and set me straight if you see the need.)

Researching plantations to visit on this trip, I noticed a recurrent criticism with reviewers: where were the slaves? When I came across Frogmore Plantation, I was thrilled because it seemed to be the one and only southern plantation that could provide a well-rounded introduction on slavery and plantation life; this is a very new topic for the kids. We can pick cotton, tour slave quarters, see one of the few working cotton gins in the country, and then learn about cotton in the modern world. Indeed this was going to be a highlight for all of us!

However, immediately it fell short of my expectations. The tour was to be 2 hours long: 30 minute historical video, an hour walk through the buildings and another video at the end discussing modern cotton production. I asked if we could tailor the tour a bit to accommodate the kids' interests and Guide simply said, "No, because if someone else were to join us I'd have to give them the proper tour." (Okay, but until someone else shows up?????)

Guide said that I, as the parent, would just have to decide if they could handle the 2 hours. Fine. We watched the video and I found myself relieved that the kids were bored and lost in their own thoughts. Certain facts were verbalized, but the message given through tone and body language was disturbing:

1. Most nations at the time had slaves. (So we weren't that bad actually.)
2. Only 25% of Southerners had slaves and only 1% of them had more than a hundred. (Keep in mind there were about 4 million slaves altogether.)
3. The Union states also had slaves and Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation didn't free them. It only set the framework so all slaves could be freed later with the 13th Amendment. (So he wasn't such a great guy afterall...)
4. Slaves were unhappy to be freed because they were no longer cared for and they left their plantations with nothing. (Freedom can be bad.)
5. Unlike Hollywood's depiction of Southern Belles, the plantation owner's wife was actually the hardest working person -- after the slaves, of course. (Entertaining is hard work, in a completely different kind of way.)

As we headed to our first building after the video, Peanut asked what all the tiny holes were, dotting the ground. Guide said, "Now is that really an important question? They're ants." I was stunned and explained to her that we really have no bugs where we live, so the ground is quite fascinating to them here in the south. She barely cracked a smile. She was extremely irritated with the kids asking questions the minute they walked in the door. She told them, "If you wait until I'm finished you probably won't have any questions left." There is truth to this, but we were the ONLY people here and we were actually the customers, right? Cutting them off so abruptly, they gave up trying to listen to her at all -- we all struggled with her accent and the speed with which she spewed out facts like a recorder.

This following example marks the moment when we truly understood each other:

Guide considered us misinformed, and I found her terribly condescending not to mention delivering an extremely biased and inaccurate history of plantation life. Peanut mentioned something about the southern ladies lounging around, and Guide looked her dead in the eye and said, "Who taught you that?" It was an accusation more than a question. Peanut sheepishly pointed to me and the guide lifted her chin and gave me a knowing look of disapproval. She explained that if a lady was lounging, it was because she had fallen ill. My mind drifted back to the fainting couch at Longhorn House last night where we learned Southern women often fainted (due to their tight corsets) and could land without showing their ankles. As we all know, it's also called a chaise lounge.

One of the cabins was set up like a little kitchen with papier mache food sitting around, mostly breads and such. Peanut said, "Is all of this food fake or is some of it real?" Guide responded, "Now, what would this food look like if it was sitting out like this? Could it really be real? It'd be all moldy." I was so irritated with her condescending tone by this time that I said, "Peanut, tell her where we actually saw real bread that was several months old and looked just like this." They all shouted, "On the ships!" (See Plymouth, MA post.)

The final straw was just before the last video. Driving around the countryside, we'd noticed green bottles hanging on sticks all over the farms. Guide pointed to one on display and spoke something but all we understood was "so they know what to do". I asked her twice to please repeat herself at which point I looked at Grandma and said, "Do you understand what she's talking about?" I was fed up by then after an hour with Guide that I no longer cared about offending her. Grandma missed it, too.

Finally, we realized she was talking about BUGS (one of our favorite topics!), the Boll Weevil. She wasn't about to make it clearer, and instead stared blankly at us while we tried to make sense of her words that ran together like molasses. It was like pulling teeth to understand the the mysteries of those green bottles, but finally, we got it: Boll Weevils are attracted to the green color. They climb into the bottles and someone comes along to count them. Based on the count, farmers know which crops need to be treated with pesticides and which can wait until later.

One final sin: Grandma wanted to buy a book on Slave Quilts in the gift shop and she asked Guide if she'd read it. Her response, "Yes, and you'd have to decide for yourself if you believe any of it. I mean, slaves really exaggerated and I don't know, maybe some patterns could have different meanings, but I don't know where slaves would be able to get different colors to mean different things." Grandma opted to buy the book, and held back mentioning the Gee's Bend quilters.

**cool facts** One of the slave quarters had a huge "cotton carrying bag" in it and we got to try to lift it. That's what they dragged through the fields every day. Slaves were chosen by their ability -- a "one hand" slave was 18-40 years old and strong, so they worked in the fields all day. A weaker slave would end up in the kitchen or laundry of the main plantation house or somewhere else picking cotton seeds. Cotton plants are in the Hibiscus family and can reach 6 feet tall. There are 26 seeds in every cotton boll; it would take a slave 10 hours to get the seeds out of a basket of cotton like the one Peanut and Doodle are holding in the picture. Eli Whitney, what can we say? Once the seeds are out, the cotton is called lint and is taken to be cleaned, then shipped to the textile industry. Any remaining fuzz gets turned into make-up, car parts, many random things. The actual seed becomes Crisco (Crystallized Cottonseed Oil), pure cotton seed oil, cattle feed or mulch.