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| Cabin at Slagville. Lucey Bowen, October, 2019 |
I first heard of
Stagville Plantation from Michael Twitty. His life’s mission is to reconstruct the
cuisine of his African and African-American ancestors, and to honor them. He
holds them up to their proper place in the Southern tradition and in American
culture.
At Stagville, he
prepared a dinner in the style and manner of the Antebellum south, out of
doors, as close as practicable to what the enslaved of the time would have
cooked and eaten. For Michael, this meal
was sacramental.
Stagville is about
twenty five miles from Chapel Hill. Once upon a time, this domain of Bennehan
and Cameron families, immigrants form Scotland, encompassed 30,000 acres and
900 enslaved people. The state of North Carolina has preserved a small section
of this place for historical interpretation of a plantation fueled by the labor
of enslaved people and sharecroppers.
I was afraid to visit
Stagville, afraid of what I might feel. Horror? Grief? A month ago Michael
blasted out an open letter, this one to visitors made uncomfortable by the
presentation of slavery on Southern plantation tours. Michael wrote about the
necessity of facing this history. “You miss out on magic …when you shut down
your soul. Going to what few plantations remain, your job is to go with respect
and homage and light.”
So two weeks ago, I
drove north through the shopping malls of suburban Durham and into second-and-third
growth forests. After some miles I turned down the gravel road to the visitor
center, located down the hill from the two story house which was the Bennehan’s
home.
Two school busses
were parked nearby. I was early for the eleven o’clock tour. A volunteer guide welcomed
me. As I’m a docent at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, I wanted to learn how Stagville
develops tours for school children and
adults. The staff explained. “Stagville is dedicated to teaching about the
lives, work, families, and culture of enslaved people on one of the largest plantations
in North Carolina.” There are six different school tours; programs for elementary,
middle and high school students.
Docent and site manager agreed that
varied responses were expected.
With two other
first time visitors, I drove to Horton’s Grove, a section that includes several
two-story dwellings built in the 1850s by enslaved peoples. This was where Michael
prepared dinner. The four-room houses were used continued by sharecroppers well
into the 20th Century, each room occupied by a family.
All was empty and
quiet; only the docent’s stories brought history to life. I soon understood
that everything about Stagville was engineered for profit, to extract the most
work. Keeping the enslaved housed, fed, clothed, and healthy was just good
business. Similarly, the enormous three-bay barn, located a half- mile away,
was engineered for the care and feeding of the mules who pulled the farm
equipment.
When I try to
imagine myself as enslaved here, I feel fear. There’s a need to hide my
thoughts, to say nothing, to give nothing away. Would I endure, survive, have
children? Or would I crumble, nameless, forgotten in an unmarked grave?
Many people in
Chapel Hill, Hillsboro and Durham are descendants of people enslaved at
Stagville and its sister plantations. They have persisted in this place through
the violence that ended Reconstruction, through segregation enforced with
violence.
They have built community and
family. What is the source of their resilience?
During the
excavations and restorations of Stagville, a cowrie shell, two divining rods
and a wooden staff were found near the dwellings. The cowrie is not native to
the new world. On the wooden staff, a vine had created a helix resembling a
snake. The staff had been secreted inside a wall. These fragments radiated spirit.
Robert Farris Thompson, scholar of African and Afro-American art and philosophy,
wrote of the cowrie shell’s importance to the Yoruba of West Africa, as
decoration, as money.
A week after my
visit to Stagville, I spent a morning drawing in the Ackland Museum of UNC’s
small exhibit of African sculpture. I concentrated on a wooden figure, from
Ghana. The name MOSES was engraved on one arm, and the other held up a staff
with a snake wrapped around it. A few days later, the Bible scripture at church
centered the staff of God that Moses held up when Joshua defeated the
Amalekites.
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| Statue from Ghana, Ackland Museum, Lucey Bowen, 2019 |
I heard that spirit when Rhiannon Giddens performed last week at the North Carolina Museum of Art. She accomplished something akin to Michael’s work. Giddens researches and re-assembles, and gives life to the music brought from the Europe and Africa to the New World.
Michael was right.
Respect. Homage. Light: facing our history and learning more. May magic turn to miracle.
