Episode 9

Part II:

The Plantation Museums on River Road

“Louisiana, with her fertile fields, clear skies, caressing breezes, colorful scenes of noted Romances, is reeking with the historical memories of a day past – but never to be forgotten.”

— J.G. Ewing

Foreword, Louisiana: a Tourist Guide to Points of General and Historic Interest. Louisiana Highway Commission, 1932.

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📸 photos by author. Destrehan Plantation Museum, December 21, 2021. Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum, October 10, 2022. Laura Plantation & Creole Heritage Site, October 9, 2022. Oak Alley Plantation, October 9, 2022.

📸 Videos by author. October 2022 & December 2022.

📸 2021 Juneteenth celebration announcement. @DestPlantation on Twitter.

📸 Destrehan mule barn. Private Plantation Tour, Tour New Orleans. Link

📸 John Cummings, Whitney Plantation & Slavery, C-SPAN.com Link

📸 E.D. Cizek, J.H. Lawrence, R. Sexton. Destrehan: The Man, The House, The Legacy, pg 143. “Costumed interpreters welcome visitors to Destrehan Plantation”

📸 Marc St. Gil for the EPA, Lake Charles & South LA, 1972. Wikimedia Commons.

📸 Louisiana Federal Writers’ Project, Gumbo YaYa, 1945. Pg. 258.

📸 Pan American Record, Vol. 1. No. 1. September, 1916. Pg. 11. Link

📸 Cizek, Lawrence, Sexton. Destrehan, pg 57. “Original River Road Historical Society Board of Directors.”(RRHS archives) ca. 1973

📸 Unknown Department of Justice Photographer. Ruby Bridges & four Federal Marshals. New Orleans, November 1960. Wikimedia Commons.

This is where it ends.

Watch a slideshow put to the conclusion of “Blood & Oil,” taken from Episode 9.

Laura Plantation & Creole Heritage Site

  • Road sign at entrance of Laura Plantation

    Laura Plantation: Real People, Real Stories.

  • Laura Plantation “Big House”

    The Creole-style “Big House” at Laura Plantation

  • Kitchen & chicken coup at Laura Plantation

    Original kitchen (destroyed by fire)

  • Overseer’s cabin at Laura Plantation

    Overseers’ cottage at Laura Plantation

  • Nanette’s retirement retreat

    Nanette’s retirement retreat at Laura Plantation

  • Figures at Laura Plantation

    Figures at Laura Plantation

  • Original cabins at Laura Plantation

    Original cabins at Laura Plantation, surrounded by sugarcane fields

  • Interior of original cabins

    Interior of original cabin

  • Row of original cabins

    Row of original cabins

Memories of the Old Plantation Home

Watch Lauren read the full quotation in Laura Locoul Gore’s own words, when as a child she learned of the horrors of Creole enslavement at the Duparc Plantation.

Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum

  • Memorial wall at Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum

    The Whitney Museum’s memorial wall

  • Slave jail at Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum

    Slave jail at Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum

  • Recreation of a Blacksmith shop

    Recreation of a Blacksmith shop

  • Kitchen at Whitney Museum

    Kitchen at Whitney Museum

  • Interior of Big House at Whitney Museum

    Interior of “Big House” at Whitney Museum

  • Recreation of slave cabin at Whitney Planation & Slavery museum

    Slave cabin at Whitney Museum

  • Sugar kettles at Whitney Museum

    Sugar kettles at the Whitney Museum

  • Art installation at Whitney: “Returning the Chains.”

    Art installation at Whitney: “Returning the Chains.”

  • Statues of enslaved children in Antiyoke Baptist Church at the Whitney Museum

    Statues of enslaved children in Antiyoke Baptist Church at the Whitney Museum

  • Memorial walls at the Whitney Museum

    Memorial walls at the Whitney Museum

Oak Alley Plantation

  • Rear of “Big House” at Oak Alley

    Rear of “Big House” at Oak Alley & Mint Julep bar

  • Large sign proclaiming “PLANTATION ENTRANCE”

    Large sign proclaiming “PLANTATION ENTRANCE”

  • Oak Alley asking visitors to “keep off grass”

    Oak Alley asking visitors to “keep off grass”

  • View from upstairs veranda, looking out toward the river levee.

    View from upstairs veranda, looking toward the river levee

  • View from the river looking toward the “Big House”

    View from the river looking toward the “Big House”

  • Recreation of slave cabins at Oak Alley

    Recreation of slave cabins

  • Manicured gardens at Oak Alley

    Manicured gardens at Oak Alley

Education Through Historic Preservation

Click on each cover to view the full booklet online at

St. Charles Parish Virtual Museum.

Education Through Historic Preservation Booklet Cover, Oak Alley Plantation
Education Through Historic Preservation Booklet Cover, Laura Plantation.
Education Through Historic Preservation Booklet Cover, Destrehan Plantation

1811 Freedom Uprising Memorial Garden

Whitney Plantation & Slavery Museum

For more about the Whitney Plantation and Slavery Museum:

Michelle D. Commander, “Plantation Counternarratives: Disrupting Master Accounts in Contemporary Cultural Production,” The Journal of American Culture 41, No. 1. (March 2018): 28-44.

Jessica K. Rapson, “Refining Memory: Sugar, oil and plantation tourism on Louisiana’s River Road” Memory Studies 13, No. 4. (2020): 752-766. Link

Ibrahima Seck, Bouki Fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation), (New Orleans: University of New Orleans, 2015). JSTOR

Clint Smith, “An Open Book, Up Under the Sky: Whitney Plantation,” in How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. (New York: Little and Brown, 2021). Author website

For Black perspectives on plantation museums and local history narratives:

Erik Johnson, “Slavery, Tourism, and Memory in New Orleans’ ‘Plantation Country.’” Africa Today 65, No. 4. (Summer 2019): 101-118. Muse-JHU

For more about the industrial sugar plantation:

Sidney W. Mintz, “Plantations as Industrial Complexes,” in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. 1985. Internet Archive

For more about the Union occupation of New Orleans (1862-1865):

G. Howard Hunter, “Fall of New Orleans and Federal Occupation: For both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War, New Orleans was considered a strategic city at the mouth of the Mississippi River.” 64 Parishes. July 27, 2011. 64 Parishes

For more about Reconstruction Era cross-race progressivism:

Eric Arnesen, “To Rule or Ruin: New Orleans Dock Workers’ Struggle for Control, 1902-1903.” Labor History. 1987.

Eric Arnesen, “Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics 1863–1923.” Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Huey P. Long’s Road Program of the 1930s

Louisiana Highway commission’s Initial Paved Road Program, 1929-1931

Initial proposal for Gov. Huey P. Long’s “Paved Road Program,” 1929.

“Sign of Progress” Advertisement for Gov. Long & LHC Program, 1930

“Sign of Progress” road sign erected during construction. 1931.