Natchez & Slavery

Natchez, as I said, has a special relationship with its history, and a serious problem. Natchez is living in denial of one very critical chapter of its history. The history of Natchez is inexorably bound to the history of slavery in this country; a fact that is shamefully absent from Natchez's contemporary portrayal of itself. Now before I go any further let me make it very clear that I do not consider Natchez alone culpable or wish for some special reason to single Natchez out. The circumstances of this project have brought us together in this case. The evil that Natchez's citizens committed hundreds of years ago was not uniquely theirs nor uniquely the South's. Slavery was practiced throughout the country, both in the North and the South. And decades after slavery was abolished in this country, new immigrants found themselves, in all but name, enslaved to the North's industrial machinery that built our modern nation. My ancestors were effectively enslaved in the coal mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. One only needs to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to appreciate that the Devil amongst us simply adapted once slavery was outlawed. He is with us still in the maquiladoras along the Mexican border, the sweatshops of Malaysia, the prisions of Texas and the halls of Congress.

Natchez was more than just a Southern city where the white landed gentry owned slaves. Natchez was built both on the backs of slaves as well as on the slave trade. Those splendid antebellum mansions that you can tour all around town were not only the homes of slave owners, some were the homes of slave traders. Natchez was one of the key cities of the South to have become wealthy in the very business of buying and selling human beings.

Then as well as now, the people of Natchez took pride in the refinement of their culture. A position difficult to reconcile with the truth -- the truth that all their good taste, fine manners, material beauty and Southern charm was a veneer that covered a rotten foundation of brutality and unabated evil. I've taken the "plantation manor tour" in Natchez -- the homes are indeed beautiful -- decorated with splendid furniture. The walls are hung with priceless oil paintings -- cabinets are still full of silver and crystal. But as you walk through the house you're not going to hear the tour guide say, "...and do see that shed out back at the end of the carriage lane? That's where great great granddaddy _________ used to rape his young slave girls. And do you see that chain hangin' down from that big oak tree. Thats were they used to shackle up runaway niggers and whip them -- whip them sometimes until barely a shred of skin was left on their backs -- whip them until they were dead."

We human beings are capable of great evil as well great good -- it is the most enduring and inexplicable paradox of our nature. All of our history contains accounts of both good and bad. None of us are exempt -- for all their great achievements, noble deeds and heroic actions, every culture to have graced this planet has had its Mr. Hyde. Still, there is evil and there is unspeakable evil -- far too frequently we manage to take evil to lengths that shock even ourselves; how possibly could this have happened we ask as we stand shaking our heads. What an ignoble list we have compiled: the Crusades, the Inquisition, Nazis, Stalin's gulag, Hiroshima, Nanjing, Mao, A Year Living Dangerously, The Killing Fields, Kashmir, Rwanda -- a list so long I haven't the heart to write more. The episode of slavery in America competes with the worst on that list. How, we ask, could this have happened?

The question is all the more difficult as we look at the perpetrators and find instead of monsters, what appear to be otherwise educated, civilized, mannerly people -- people capable of creating great beauty. This is the paradox and dilemma that is Natchez. Good and evil are hand in hand -- beauty and ugliness on either side of the same coin. Natchez today has tried to grind off the ugly side of the coin. Of course, it's only natural. But how can we appreciate Natchez the beautiful when we know that beauty was paid for with lives and human misery? Isn't such beauty tarnished beyond redemption? I don't really expect the Natchez Pilgrimage tours to ever sound like my satirized version above. That would be outrageous, and yet each plantation house and slave-trader's mansion is a standing outrage. My first reaction is that they should all be burned to the ground and the earth turned over and salted.

Too much of our history contains flawed heros and dubious achievements. We must accept and cherish all the good and beautiful we can find, even Natchez, but in cases like Natchez beauty must be redeemed through confession and reparation. Healing comes through forgiveness, but forgiveness demands truth. Natchez needs to speak the truth about its past. A memorial at least would serve. Not a museum that celebrates black culture with Spiritual singing and blues harmonica players -- that skirts the issue. Natchez needs a memorial that remembers the lives without hope, the lies told, the families destroyed, the children abused, the expectations crushed, the talents wasted, the women raped, the hearts poisoned with hate, the men murdered and the promise of love ripped away. Natchez needs to tell the truth -- a truth all of us need to remember.