Attacking Slave History

Thursday's tour of the French Quarter and its heritage of slavery really drew my attention to how history should be approached. On one side, almost all of the sites we visited that were supposedly previous slave markets had been converted into hotels or banks or something commercial to adapt to modern American capitalism. In this sense, history was completely erased and nobody passing those sites with limited knowledge of where the centers of slavery were located in antebellum New Orleans would think a single moment on the history. History was erased from view and basically forced into oblivion for 21st century visitors. On the other hand, museums are established to record history, but in a very intellectual, and almost unemotional and cold manner. Monuments are set up to commemorate tragedies like slavery and the Holocaust and to honor the victims. But such treatment of history almost conditions visitors to romanticize these tragedies and exaggerate or underestimate the reality of the anguish and pain suffered therein. On yet another side, we did see one building that was supposedly very reminiscent of the slavery market that previously existed there, if not completely unchanged since then. As a reminder, this was were the man drunk as a skunk wobbled through the group. The tour guide appealed to my emotions at least when it described the place as one where babies could be heard crying, slaves could be seen singing and dancing, malnourished workers could be seen suffering, human beings could be seen being sold, human sweat and blood could be smelled. It is nearly impossible for us now to really understand and absorb the reality of slavery, but visiting sites where years before slavery markets existed and imagining myself witnessing such atrocities, but also attempting to understand the mindsets of those who owned and sold slaves. It is so easy to judge members of a different era by present-day standards. Today we can say how awful the slavery of institution, but we can fall into the trap of not understanding the forces that drove people to enslave others. So on extremes of the debate for approaching history in my view are the complete removal of remnants of history by building banks and hotels over these sites, and building museums that record history but cause romanticization of reality. One prevents placing oneself in history as if it never happened and tells people to continue on with their lives; the other sticks people in history as if that's all that mattered and life should not move on. In the middle is something like that last place we visited, where the structure remained wholly intact and made it possible to imagine what occurred there, but had been employed as a house or some other kind of building. All I can say is that sincerely trying to place myself in the history of Southern U.S. slave-society, the tour at moments did give me goosebumps, feelings of being connected, even if just slightly, to something higher: an understanding of the institution of slavery.