WHITE CASTLE — It's been almost a week since the Nottoway Plantation burned down, and historians say learning about its history can lead to deeper conversations about the building's legacy.

Nottoway Plantation was one of the largest plantation homes along the Mississippi River. The home, completed in 1859, was owned by John Randolph.

Southern University Professor Albert Samuel said Rudolph came from a powerful political family in Virginia before his family moved to Mississippi in 1820 after his father was appointed a position by President James Monroe.

Samuel said Randolph bought the land that would become Nottoway Plantation at the height of his power, owning over 7,500 acres in Iberville Parish.

“He initially got into cotton manufacturing, but then he decided he could make more money as a sugar cane plantation owner,” Samuels said.

Samuels said that, during the Civil War, Randolph went to Texas, taking more than 200 enslaved people with him. He said that if a person owned at least 20 enslaved people, that meant they were a planter themselves.

Samuels said Randolph's ownership of the plantation along the Mississippi River symbolized his wealth.

“He was really in the top echelon of slaveholders. He was one of the richest men in the South, if not the United States," Samuels said. 

Samuels said sugar cane plantations made up the bulk of plantations along the Mississippi, adding that sugar cane fields were among the most labor-intensive for enslaved people. Samuel further specified that one of the worst places to work on a sugar cane plantation was in South Louisiana.

“Oftentimes, these enslaved people had a lower life expectancy. So being sold down the river was like a death sentence,” Samuels said.

Samuels said that during chattel slavery, enslaved people were treated as property and that homes like Nottoway were built by enslaved people, and the plantation owners' wealth was built atop their backs. 

“It required a level of brutality and oppression to hold people down, even to the point they were willing to distort Christianity itself to justify the lifestyles they were accustomed to,” he said.

Samuels said that for many people, watching the plantation home burn down symbolizes oppression going up in flames. He said even before the fire, the unsavory legacy of slavery still lingered in Iberville Parish.

"Here we are, 160 years removed from the end of the Civil War, and this parish, its economy is still tied to an institution that's a vestige of slavery," Samuels said, referring to the continued use of Nottoway as a resort that romanticizes a past that whitewashes the horrors of chattel slavery.

Samuels said Nottoway's continued operation glossed over the harsh reality of life for enslaved men, women and children.

“By transforming and refashioning these places, that has created a market to sell these places to market these places as places to hold your weddings or places to have a vacation. It would be like celebrating the concentration camps in Germany where the Jews were exterminated,” Samuels said.