In Mississippi, Glorifying The OLD SOUTH No Longer Pays The Bills (Aljazeera)

[kpete]

IN MISSISSIPPI, GLORIFYING THE OLD SOUTH NO LONGER PAYS THE BILLS
Natchez needs new strategies to survive, some residents say, not nostalgia for magnolias and moonlight



A 2002 photo of the sign marking the site of the Forks of the Road, the only reminder of the South's second-largest slave market which operated in Natchez. Ben Hillyer/The Natchez Democrat/AP

Few tourists visit the free museum, although there is a growing movement to promote African-American history in Natchez, a town of 15,590 that sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. But it’s a struggle. Since the 1930s, Natchez has built its tourism business on the Old Confederacy through the Spring Pilgrimage.

The Pilgrimage focuses on Natchez’s palatial antebellum homes and a bygone way of life. Women, volunteering as tour guides, still wear hoop skirts, and the horrors of slavery are seldom mentioned. This genteel moonlight-and-magnolia history has become a point of contention for people here who think it’s time Natchez turned away from its Old South lore.

“Younger people don’t care so much about the past or the old stories,” said David S. Dreyer, a local historian who volunteers at the museum. “There are so many stories that haven’t been told here, but people might not get that with just the Pilgrimage. We need to find a way to tell new stories.”

Although only three people were touring the museum, Dreyer vigilantly told the story of African-Americans in Natchez through the decades, explaining that slavery and cotton allowed Natchez plantation owners to build some of the most palatial antebellum mansions in history.


More:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/5/natchez-antebellumplantation.html

[johnlucas]

1. That place is like Germany promoting concentration camps as tourist spots.

Who wants to relive that evil outside of nostalgic bigots?

Can't tell the story of the Old South without talking about the evils of slavery.
Those palatial residences were built from the blood of oppressed people.
It's not romantic. It's evil.

And it's about time the phony luster has faded from this whitewashed history.
Can't paint over this stain, Natchez.
The blood will always seep through.
John Lucas

[Arcanetrance]

2. I definitely agree it's time to come clean on the dirty history

But as someone who loves old buildings I would like to see them preserved still. But have the real history of things taught instead of the glorification stuff taught now

[kwassa]

4. I had tourism experiences like this. Two places, South and North.

Touring in Lafayette, Louisiana, Bayou on the Teche, when I asked what the plantation was known for, the guide was embarrassed to admit that the original family owned the largest population of slaves in the state of Louisiana. Oh, well ...

Frederick, Maryland, touring with my wife, who is black. We walk into a historical house for a tour, and it was the home of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, responsible for the Dred Scott decision. Another embarrassed guide.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, an African-American slave named Dred Scott had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted his freedom based on his having been brought by his masters to live in free territories. The Taney Court ruled that persons of African descent could not be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and thus the plaintiff (Scott) was without legal standing to file a suit. The framers of the Constitution, Taney famously wrote, believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."[4] The court also declared the Missouri Compromise (1820) unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories. Taney died during the final months of the American Civil War on the same day that his home state of Maryland abolished slavery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_B._Taney

[Wolf Frankula]

5. Why is that Emblem of Treason Flying Next to Old Glory?

Secession is Treason!

Wolf