‘These are our ancestors’: Descendants of enslaved people are shifting plantation tourism

10/2/21
 
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from The Washington Post,
10/1/21:

At three plantations in Charleston, S.C., Black descendants are connecting with their family’s history and helping reshape the narrative

Robert Bellinger was driving down Ashley River Road in Charleston, S.C., enjoying the landscape of live oak trees and Spanish moss, when it dawned on him exactly where he was headed and why.

“It just hit me,” Bellinger recalled of his drive in November 2016. “I thought, ‘I’m headed to a family reunion on a plantation where my ancestors were enslaved.’”

Bellinger, a historian and researcher from Boston, was on his way to Middleton Place, a former rice plantation in the Ashley River Historic Corridor. Today, Middleton Place is a national historic landmark and museum, and it is home to the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States.

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