Whitney Plantation, Louisiana

Within the boundaries of the “Habitation Haydel”, as the Whitney Plantation was originally known, the story of the Haydel family of German immigrants and the slaves that they held were intertwined.

In 2014, the Whitney Plantation opened its doors to the public for the first time in its 262 year history as the only plantation museum in Louisiana with a focus on slavery.

Through museum exhibits, memorial artwork and restored buildings and hundreds of first-person slave narratives, visitors to Whitney will gain a unique perspective on the lives of Louisiana's enslaved people.

whitneyplantation.com

Field of Angels, Rod Moorhead

rodmoorhead.com

The field of Angels is a section of the slave memorial dedicated to 2,200 Louisiana slave children who died before their third birth date and documented in the Sacramental Records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Their names are engraved on granite slabs along with quotes describing their everyday life. There are no indications of death rates in the plantation inventories but further documentation from the Sacramental Records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans reveals earliness of motherhood among the enslaved women and high mortality among their children. Thirty-nine children died on this plantation from 1823 to 1863, only six reaching the age of five. The level of this death toll can be better understood when one thinks of a house where a child dies every year. Some of the children, either on this site or elsewhere, died in tragic circumstances such as drowning, epidemics, being burned or hit by lightning.

A black angel carrying a baby to Heaven is built in the middle of the field. Rod Moorhead made this bronze sculpture. The latter’s work ranges from small clay figures to large bronzes. In 1993 he started Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi, and was co-owner until 1997. Among his public commissions are Concerto, a seventeen foot bronze of a violinist and cellist which stands in front of the Gertrude Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi, and a life size sculpture of James Meredith for the Civil Rights Memorial also at the University of Mississippi. He has work in the Roger Ogden Collection in New Orleans, and the collection of Morgan Freeman, among others. whitneyplantation.com

The Wall of Honor is a memorial dedicated to all the people who were enslaved on the Whitney Plantation. The names and the information related to them (origin, age, skills) were retrieved from original archives and engraved on granite slabs.

So far, more than 350 slaves were identified on official records. Sexual exploitation gave an additional level of horror to the lives of enslaved women.  Every individual identified in legal records as a “mulatto” was, by definition, a product of white parentage in some measure. This occurred virtually exclusively due to slave owners impregnating their slaves.  This was a common occurrence prior to emancipation and the “relationship” between white owners and enslaved women was sometimes documented through birth records.

The couple who would become the ancestors of the African American Haydel family, Victor Theophile Haydel (1835-1924) and Marie Celeste Becnel (1840-1885) were both born on the Whitney Plantation. Victor was the son of an enslaved woman named Anna, who was herself a mulatto. Victor was fathered by Antoine Haydel, the brother of Marie Azelie Haydel, the last Haydel family member to own the Whitney. Celeste was a daughter of Francoise, the enslaved cook of Marie Azelie, and was fathered by Florestan Becnel, Marie Azelie’s brother-in-law. It is known that each of these men was married, and that refusing to engage in sexual relations with a white man was not an option available to either of these women.

Victor is the ancestor of all the black Haydels many of whom became successful entrepreneurs, educators, and politicians. One example is the Morial family which gave two mayors to New Orleans. Victor Haydel was the great grandfather of Sybil Haydel, an educator, activist, and a community leader. Sybil became the First Lady of New Orleans when her husband, Ernest N. Morial, was elected the first African-American Mayor of the Crescent City. Their son, Marc Morial, also rose to fame and was elected President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, while serving two full terms as the mayor of New Orleans like his father. whitneyplantation.com

theatlantic.com