“Plantation tours offer an abundance of learning opportunities, but they can also offer a stereotypical, even anachronistic, portrayal of slavery and life in the Old South. …
“At Latta Plantation, near Charlotte, North Carolina, during our 2016 tour, students inquired toward the end of the tour about the slaves who had worked on the plantations, since the tour guide had not mentioned anything on the subject. The tour guide asked the students to wait until the African-American family, who had been on the tour, left, at which point, he answered in vague and circumscribed terms….”
From “The Plantation Tour Disaster: Teaching Slavery, Memory, and Public History” by Niels Eichhorn in the Journal of the Civil War Era (Dec. 5)
Eichhorn isn’t the first to take issue with Latta Plantation’s depiction of slavery.