Beyond the Fire: Reclaiming Black Craftsmanship from the Ruins of Nottoway

The following is a guest post by Torren L. Gatson, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and co-editor of Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence which is available now wherever books are sold.

The burning of Louisiana’s Nottoway Plantation in May has sparked a wave of reactions across the public sphere from local residents to the academy and across social media outlets. For many, especially within the African American community, the destruction of this site of historical oppression has been met with a sense of poetic justice or symbolic closure. The image of the grand white columns collapsing into ash has been seen by some as a powerful metaphor for the fall of a brutal legacy. The joy expressed in these reactions is understandable, even cathartic, as it reconciles the centuries of exploitation and systemic violence.

What is often forgotten in narratives about plantations even in their destruction is the skilled labor, craftsmanship, and creative agency of the enslaved and free African Americans who often participated in the building and maintaining these structures.

River Street in Louisiana holds historical significance as a key artery in the region’s antebellum economy, linking plantations to the Mississippi River for the transport of goods, particularly sugar and cotton. This area was central to the wealth and development of the plantation system, which was built on the forced labor of enslaved Africans. Houmas House, once dubbed the “Sugar Palace,” showcases opulence but often glosses over the brutal conditions endured by the enslaved people who built and maintained it. Nottoway Plantation, the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the South, similarly emphasizes grandeur while providing only minimal acknowledgment of its reliance on slavery. Both sites attract tourists with their architecture and gardens, often presenting a romanticized version of plantation life. Critics argue that these portrayals obscure the violent and dehumanizing realities of slavery that underpinned the plantations’ success. Thus, while River Street and these homes are emblematic of Louisiana’s rich heritage, they also reflect the ongoing struggle to honestly confront the legacy of slavery in historical narratives.

Yet, amid the commentary and the memes, there is another story being eclipsed, one that requires a deeper reckoning with our collective memory and how we choose to frame historical events. What is often forgotten in narratives about plantations even in their destruction is the skilled labor, craftsmanship, and creative agency of the enslaved and free African Americans who often participated in the building and maintaining these structures. While absolutely sites of suffering; they were also spaces where Black ingenuity, artistry, and labor were poured into hand made bricks and carved molding. Nottoway, like many plantations, did not rise from the soil fully formed by the hands of its white owners. It was constructed, maintained, and sustained by Black people who while enslaved, were also artisans, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, domestic workers and more. Their names are scantly recorded, their contributions habitually ignored. The plantation’s grandeur, long used as a symbol of Southern “elegance,” was in fact an enduring monument to their forced, unacknowledged labor. When Nottoway burned, we lost not only a site of pain but also an artifact of African American craftsmanship and one that has never truly been honored nor researched for what it represented. We lost a chance to confront the complicated duality of these spaces: both as symbols of white supremacy and as evidence of Black intellectual thought with respect to design. 

To be clear, mourning the loss of African American contributions does not mean mourning the loss of Nottoway as an institution or the contemporary false narratives of enslavement the site portrayed up until the fire. Rather, it is a call to recognize that history is not cleanly divided into “good” and “bad” spaces. The same plantation house that enforced human subjugation also bears physical witness to Black creativity. If we only celebrate its fall without recovering the stories of those who built it, we risk repeating the very erasure that slavery depended on. The destruction of Nottoway offers an opportunity not just to dismantle romanticized myths of the Old South, but to build a fuller, more honest narrative. One that centers Black life not only as a story of bondage and survival, but also of skill, contribution, and presence. As the smoke clears, let us not forget the hands that laid the foundation and let us begin to name them.

In April of 2025, UNC Press published Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit for Independence. This book captured the indelible mark Black craftspeople left on the landscape through the creation of material objects as well as built structures through the display of a curated exhibition at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C. This landmark exhibition brought together forty-seven pieces of Black material culture from museums and private collections across the United States ushering in constructive conversations around the importance presenting a comprehensive vignette of the fight for freedom in America from the colonial period through reconstruction.

At sites like Nottoway, where splendor is celebrated but the hands that shaped it are ignored, Fighting for Freedom demands a reevaluation of whose stories we center. By bringing these hidden figures to light, Fighting for Freedom dismantles the romanticized versions of history and replaces them with a fuller, more truthful account. Ultimately, this book is a powerful reminder that to honor Black excellence, we must first confront the distortions that have buried it.