Whitney Plantation
Former sugar plantation turned solemn memorial museum devoted entirely to the history of slavery.
Location
About this audio guide
Whitney Plantation in New Orleans began as Habitation Haydel, a German immigrant's indigo farm turned sugar plantation where more than a hundred enslaved people once worked the punishing grinding season. The guide follows the plantation's ledgers of enslaved children who died young, and leads you into the Field of Angels, a courtyard memorial naming thousands of children who died before age three across the parish. A retired trial lawyer named John Cummings bought the land in 1999 and spent years and his own fortune turning it into a museum built solely around slavery's history, with a wall naming every enslaved person documented on the property.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Oak Alley Plantation
Greek Revival mansion framed by centuries-old live oaks, built and worked by enslaved laborers.
Destrehan Plantation
Antebellum river-road manor where a wartime tribunal tried captured rebels of America's largest slave uprising.
Laura Plantation: Louisiana's Créole Heritage Site
Raised Creole plantation house and slave cabins where Br'er Rabbit's ancestor tales were first recorded.
Saint Augustine Catholic Church
Iron shackle-and-chain memorial and pew-rows recalling an antebellum church's fight over who could sit where.
New Orleans African American Museum
Brick Creole cottage and plantation-turned-freedom ground, raised above the water table on a swamp's first brickyard.
LaLaurie Mansion
Ornate French Quarter mansion whose fire exposed a hidden torture chamber and drove an owner abroad.