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Intro
So, when you travel down to a place, you are sure to encounter its history. For many, this is one of the appeals of traveling to a specific destination. It’s a chance to learn a fascinating story of a place different from your own. When I came to New Orleans, this was no exception. I wanted to discover the area’s history and sought ways to do it. Then it came to me – a plantation tour! One of the most obvious fragments of the region’s story is the slavery of African people taking place for centuries. We know slavery. We hate slavery. But we’d be lying if we said we could just escape its looming shadow.
So I am a person of color, making this endeavor all the weirder to me. The thought of visiting a plantaton caused a strange feeling to bubble up in my stomach. In the end, I took a dual plantation tour during my stay in New Orleans. I booked a Double Tour, featuring two plantations, those being the Laura Creole Plantation and the Oak Alley Plantation.
For the record, this post’s purposes are just to review the tour itself. My vantage point as a Person of Color is important though. I found it beneficial to include it for any other people of color who have an interest in these things. But, for clarity, this post is mostly just a review. I want to, later on, write more posts on the morality of traveling to places with dark pasts like this. So, look out for that to air out all the more complicated feelings. With that out the way, let’s go!
Basic Info
I used the tour company called Cajun Encounters. And you can find the very package I did here:
Since this is a double tour, the price is a bit jacked up. With taxes included, expect to pay a little over $100 per adult or $75 for a child under 12. The price includes pickup and transport by bus with most destinations of the pickup outside hotels. You choose the one closest to you and receive a QR code to show the bus driver when they arrive. However, in my experience, the bus driver will just ask for your name instead. When I took the tour they picked me up on Canal Street, luckily one of the city’s biggest thoroughfares.
The bus ride was quite nice to the first plantation, this being the Laura Creole Plantation. My group was about 7 or 8 people with a few more that only booked one plantation for the tour. They split us up later. Anyways, back to the drive. The friendly bus driver tells stories about Louisiana culture and history. It begins with New Orleans but expands to the rest of the state as we move westward from the city. Entering the real plantation country, you pass by beautiful plots of land. It’s home to famous old plantations like the one portrayed as Candyland in Django Unchained. The whole ride from New Orleans to Laura takes about an hour and a half.
What to Bring
- Photography Equipment: ie a phone or camera, anything to clickity click with
- Sunscreen: It gets quite humid down there
- Bug Spray: Especially at Oak Alley the insects can be quite aggressive
- Money: We stop at gift stores before and after the plantations. You can buy water and snacks there as well
Thoughts going In
I will keep this piece short as I want to save my personal opinions for another post. However, it is relevant to get some things out of the way. Traveling alone, I was reluctant to take this tour. I feared how the tour could present the delicate subject matter. Most people I’d encountered in New Orleans were very friendly. However, upon entering the tour bus, I still found myself on high alert, anxiety rising. The tour consisted of a majority of elderly Caucasian people, setting the alarm bells ringing. Yet, I decided not to rush to conclusions just yet.
The Laura Creole Plantation
We began with a guided tour of the Laura Creole Plantation. A matter of contention within my group at least was the use of the term Creole and what exactly this meant. According to our guide, Creole is the term for the general mixture of cultures present in Louisiana, a mix of French, Acadian, African, Native American, Haitian, Spanish and more. Thus Creole is an umbrella term and other terms associated with Louisiana such as Cajun are subgroups of Creole. With that distinction out of the way, the owners of this plantation were French Creoles who passed down the reigns through the generations.
We start the tour off inside the home, beginning under the main entranceway. They introduce us to the family that owned the plantation. Then we receive a history lesson on them and their business. We go underneath the houses and look at the wooden pillars used to hold the entire edifice up. We learn about the culture of Antebellum Louisiana and the brutality of slave life on sugar plantations like this one. Laura was unique for its day; at times a women-owned plantation featuring several dynastic disputes between rival claimants to the plantation.
From there we proceed upstairs to see the lavish living quarters of the family. Again we learn a little about their wealth, its roots in forced labor, and the strife that came to both sides of the spectrum in such a society. The interiors are gorgeous in their upper-class ways, offering a gleaming view of what Antebellum wealth looked like in Louisiana.
As we exit the main building into the vast fields outside, you can revel at the building’s wondrous design. Its bright and warm colors beset the dark blueprint behind its inception. We learn more about the slaves themselves, along with details of the area’s construction. Next, we maneuver outside towards the Slave Quarters. They consist of small wooden cabins whose facades are miles away from the grandeur of the plantation’s centerpiece building.
On the way down, we stop in a narrow shed, whose purpose seems to just be to shield us from the shade to learn more about the buying, selling, and exchanging of human life that took place here. It’s quite harrowing to see and hear the stories of people reduced to prices and stats but nonetheless essential to get the full picture. More disturbingly, we learn about the sexual relations perpetrated by slave owners at the Laura Plantation via a family tree featuring several mixed-race children brought up as slaves working under their father.
Entering the Slave Cabin, of which there seems to be just one open to visitors, we find nothing more than a small wooden cottage resembling a shed with little beyond the bare necessities of beds, tables and cooking areas. As we explore the quarters, the guide explains the day-to-day lives of the slaves, how grueling working sugar plantations can be, and how they managed to make the most of their existence nonetheless.
The last stop on the journey through Laura takes us through the yard and by this big decrepit building once designed to be the special home of one of the plantation’s rich proprietors. She wanted an extra and extra exuberant plot of residence for herself. Unluckily for her, she never lived to see its completion… I think. If that’s wrong blame the tour not me haha.
Thoughts
I enjoyed the Laura Creole Plantation more than I assumed I would. When the tour began and we heard about the French family behind the plantation I already felt a little uneasy. A lot of their story is on overcoming personal hardship and learning to lead a successful business, a bitter narrative when you remember that said business is capitalizing off human suffering. Nevertheless, they handle the subject of enslaved people with tact, brevity, and care. The story of the slave labor that built the Laura’s profits stays consistent. They make it side-by-side with the story of the family and the building itself. They never allow visitors to see the location for anything less than the whole picture of what it was, good and bad.
With all that done and out the way with, I would truthfully recommend the Laura Plantation Tour as I found the place beautiful, the history fascinating and the tragedy handled with care. I have no real complaints personally.
Now! On to Oak Alley!
Mr. Click Below for Page 2
