This session is made possible by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. To learn more, visit our Partners page.

Within Louisiana's "Plantation Country,” Black descendant communities surround popular plantation museums where their ancestors were once enslaved. While some plantation museums across the country have made efforts to include descendant voices as part of changing the narrative, descendants have ensured narrative agency by acquiring plantations and other Black historic sites.

The Descendants Project, a nonprofit organization based in Louisiana and founded by its two directors, has reclaimed two plantations to accomplish their mission to eradicate the legacies of slavery and to ensure the inclusion of Black descendants in heritage, tourism, and preservation. Black descendants are using preservation to maintain, create, or reclaim a sense of place.

But how can the preservation field meet the needs of these spaces, their owners, and the communities they serve? How do Black owners perceive, engage, and negotiate the racial trauma associated with the sites and often the preservation communities in which they belong? How does a descendant identity influence ownership and preservation of Black historic sites and how does the ownership and preservation of the site impact identity?

Joy Banner, Co-founder of The Descendants Project will describe her experience as owner of a plantation house from which she descends and the recently acquired 1811 Kid Ory House/Woodland Plantation in Louisiana, the site of the largest slave rebellion in the United States.