2007: The Story of American Slavery, Retold

This story was selected by the Country Roads magazine editorial team as the representative piece for 2007 in the archival project "40 Stories From 40 Years"—celebrating the magazine's 40th anniversary on stands. Click here to read more stories from the project. 

We've written about Whitney Plantation again and again since this early article, as it continues to have an immeasurable impact on our regional culture and understanding of history. See Chris Turner-Neal's story written shortly after the museum's 2014 opening, as well as our more recent study of the state of plantation tourism in Louisiana, written for our September 2023 40th Anniversary issue. Learn more about Whitney Plantation's current operations at whitneyplantation.org. 

John Cummings is a man with a dream. He sees Whitney Plantation as a living museum to tell the true story of slavery—and he doesn't mean a single museum building with photos and displays. "My goal is to create a museum comprised of many authentic buildings of the period that relates to the lives of the slaves," explained Cummings, a prominent New Orleans attorney who has been pursuing this dream ever since purchasing the property in 1998.

Located thirty miles from New Orleans and fronting a three-thousand-foot stretch of land facing the west bank of the Mississippi River in St. John the Baptist Parish, Cummings' project allows him a lot of room in which to pursue his dream—250 acres to start with.

Standing stately at the entry to the property behind an alley of old oak trees, the Whitney plantation house was built in 1790 by Jean Jacques Haydel Jr., the grandson of Ambrose Haydel, a German immigrant. Ambrose came to Louisiana with his mother and siblings in 1721. It is believed that he and his wife lived on the Whitney land tract as early as 1750. His sons, Jean Jacques and Nicholas, eventually owned adjoining plantations. It was Jean Jacques Jr., who built the Whitney plantation house in 1790. The house was later expanded in 1803. The plantation remained in the family until it was sold to Bradish Johnson after the Civil War. Johnson named the property Whitney in honor of his grandson, Harry Payne Whitney. Formosa Plastics Corporation (FPC)  purchased the land surrounding the Whitney in 1990 with plans to build a rayon mill, but it never materialized. 

"The owner of the FPC lives in Taipei, Formosa," Cummings said. He had family members who had been enslaved by the Japanese for years, so he understood the ravages of slavery and he became very interested in my vision to tell the true story of  American slavery. He has been very supportive of what I am doing."

By the time Cummings came along, Whitney had fallen into such disrepair that it appeared it might be lost forever. "I knew the main house and dependencies were falling down and I couldn't fathom allowing one more River Road gem to end up as another historical ruin," he said in earnest. "My good friend Judge Tom Kliebert told me about the property being for sale and I knew that I had to have it." Cummings takes great pride in the fruits of his efforts so far. "I have invested more than $4 million and I don't have a limited budget to complete the job," he added "Indigo, rice, corn and sugarcane were the principal crops during the historical period of Whitney, and it is interesting that much of the surrounding land is still planted in sugarcane."

It was indeed the good fortune of the once grand plantation to find a caretaker such as Cummings. After stabilizing the plantation house he set about envisioning the grand scheme of what the Whitney could become. "I am a history buff," he said, adding "I have had such a passion for what I am doing that I have read at least two books each week on slavery since I purchased the property. However, there is so much to learn that I always say that I am in the second semester of the first grade in knowing all I would like to know about slavery."

He went on, "I hired professor Abraham Sack from the University of Dakar, Senegal, because my early research showed that most of the slaves in this area came from the Senegambia region (a confederation of Senegal and Gambia) of West Africa. Sack teaches in Dakar and comes to the plantation two or three months a year to do research. He continues his research inSenegal the rest of the year while he is teaching. To have the most authentic presentation on the facts of slavery, I hired a gifted historian Katie Frances Morlas, who has a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University. She is in the process of reading all of the newspapers from this area in English, French and Spanish and she is translating the ones that aren't in English. She is also checking the court records along the German Coast—St. Charles, St. John the Baptist and St. James—and creating a database of all the families who were slaves. I learned early on that you can't get involved with this historically significant property without realizing that slavery was a very important part of it."

Besides the plantation house, there were several other historically significant buildings on the property, but Cummings soon began moving more onto the land. He acquired an historic 1861 black church—Antioch Baptist—from the town of Paulina down the River Road, more slave cabins, and a greenhouse. "I also began to accumulate old materials," he continued. "I bought flatbeds of old cypress, old iron materials, and everything 1 could think of, from old farm equipment to furnishings of the period." 

Several buildings original to the property that are in the process of being restored include an overseer's cottage, the oldest kitchen in Louisiana, the sole surviving French barn in America, several slave quarters, a mule barn, and some other smaller outbuildings. Cummings purchased the Columbia sugarhouse in Edgard, several miles downriver from the Whitney, and once it is restored, it will house classrooms for lectures and research. 

"I also began assembling a permanent work crew of talented craftsmen whom I think are geniuses." Then he added with a smile, "Look around you and you will see they will never be out of work." He walked over to the church that is in the final stages of restoration and pointed out a large stack of cypress that had been fashioned into shakes duplicating the original ones made by slaves. The shakes are being added to the exterior of the church to replace those that have succumbed to the ravages of time. "Aren't these magnificent?" he asked. "This is an example of the talented work that is being done here today."

He had special praise for Russell Stagg, the supervisor of the work at Whitney. "Russell is a stone mason, brick mason, finish carpenter, wood carver, landscaper, and operator of almost every major piece of heavy equipment that you can imagine."

Cummings walked over to a pigeonnier (the structure used by upper-class French for housing pigeons) and carefully pointed out its finer points. "This one was built in 2004 by Russell," he said, and then pointed to the second pigeonnier nearby: "That one was constructed in 1790. It's original to the property. The new one looks exactly like the old one. I don't believe the average person could ever tell the difference."

When he walked up the stairway to the main level of the Whitney Plantation house he proudly announced, "Look what we uncovered." He was referring to painted murals visible on the house's exterior walls and faux marble and granite finishes. "All of this art was done by Domenico Canova, a nephew of Antonio Canova, who was Napoleon Bonaparte's artist of choice." The significance of the murals is that no other plantation in Louisiana or the South had been known to have decorative paintings applied to the exterior. Domenico, who is said to have apprenticed to Antonio, was brought from Italy to do the frescoes on the ceilings of St Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square in New Orleans. Antonio and Domenico were known as two of the finest artists in the world in their day." 

A trip around to the rear second-story veranda provided another glimpse of Domenico's art. "We discovered all of this when we were carefully removing the paint to see what we could find," he said. "I was so pleased with the discovery and it just challenged me to be careful restoring everything on the property. My thirst for knowledge sent me on a mission to discover everything I could about the Canovas. I even learned it was Antonio who carved the famous sculpture of Pauline, Napoleon's sister, covered in a daphenes cloth that made her appear nude."

It was also Cummings' thirst for knowledge that led him to research everything he could about slavery of the period. "I envision that someday this will be a research center where people will come from all over the world to learn about slavery. I hope to see archeological students from Tulane University and other institutes of higher learning conducting excavation sites on the property, bus loads of students from surrounding schools coming to learn about the history of slavery, and people coming from every corner of the earth to view what I believe will be one of the finest living history sites on the globe." He hopes to have summer classes on many topics, weddings and gospel concerts in the church, a restaurant operated by a prominent chef on the grounds, and even overnight accommodations for students and guests in some of the historic buildings. "Don't you think it would be exciting to be able to stay on the grounds?" he asked.

"While we still have a lot to do, we hope to be open before the end of the year."

"I have read about many slave memorials that have been undertaken and never completed, and I know we will demonstrate our ability to complete this project. To date I have self-financed the entire project. I am a man of passion and vision and what I now need is to find people who share the same passion. I need people to I become involved in this first step in a thousand-mile journey. I hope to have a world-class board of directors and someday go to Congress and show them that the group assembled here has the capability to tell about all of the slaves who came to America. I hope to expand this project to honor all of these people who have been all but forgotten. It is my dream for the Whitney to eventually become the National Museum of Slavery." 

Bonnie Warren's diverse career has included stints as editor of New Orleans Magazine, city editor for Better Homes and Gardens and Metropolitan Home, and as a contributing writer for dozens of local and national magazines.