Blog Post#3: Still Currently in New Orleans - Finished reading Coming Through Slaughter and now reading The Moviegoer
Started Writing on May 27, 2022
No matter how much you know, or how much you think you know, there’s still always so much to learn. During my time in New Orleans, I have learned something new everyday. I think it makes things easier because I am literally visiting a brand new place I have never been to for the first time, but at the same time it feels so much more bigger than just learning new things in a new place. New Orleans is a city that has so much history a part of it. It is in the build of the city, the tragedies it has gone through, the incredibly unique traditions, and even the people that live here and as a class we’ve been able to see a variety of museums and exhibits focusing on different things connected to New Orleans.
We got to visit the Whitney Plantation, the Mardi Gras exhibit, and an exhibit about the hurricanes that New Orleans has been through, including hurricane Katrina. The place that left me feeling so much emotionally was the Whitney Plantation. I myself, being a person of color, and my parents have always made it a habit to learn about my past and history, especially when it comes to slavery. I like learning about it and I feel like I know a good amount about things that happened during slavery, but this visit to the plantation showed me that I still have so much to learn. It opened my eyes to just how bad things were back then, and hearing about some of the first hand experiences from people who were in the middle of everything while it was happening was like taking a slap to the face. When we had first arrived to the plantation we were given a souvenir about the life of an actual slave who had lived on the plantation and I think it all hit even harder when I was walking through this area in the plantation about all the experiences of many slaves that spanned over a decade and I actually found the name of the person I received on the wall. Her name was Ceceil George and she actually had a life on the Whitney Plantation and she was apart what makes the history there. Going there made me want to learn even more about slavery and I am going to make it an even bigger goal of mine to do just that. One of the things that I appreciated the most about the plantation was that it catered to remembering the slaves, not the people that owned. It was dedicated to learning about the lives of the slaves whether that was their names, their experiences, how they ran things as workers, and their own history. I’m glad I was able to visit.
The Mardi Gras exhibit was very informative because all of the things I thought I knew about Mardi Gras were either wrong or had much more depth to it. It was extremely fascinating to learn how it was created and how it became what it is today. The exhibit also consisted of a variety of different outfits people wore on the floats. What I didn’t know was that a lot of the outfits actually had a lot of meaning behind them. I had assumed that some of the outfits were created for the aesthetic, but I was quite wrong. Lastly, right under the Mardi Gras exhibit was the one about the hurricanes. This one left me with a feeling similar to the one I felt after leaving the plantation because I knew that all of these tragic stories were about actual real people. Once again, I got to hear a lot about first hand experiences from people that lived through the hurricanes. I would have to say my favorite part about this exhibit was the ordinary heroes part. It was the part that was dedicated to random pedestrians who were seen as heroes because of the helpful things they did for people whether that was helping people get out of their flooding homes or helping a woman give birth on the street after the hurricanes had ripped through the city. New Orleans carries so much history and I love that it is memorialized here to be remembered and never forgotten.
As I was visiting all of these locations about the history of New Orleans, I couldn’t help but think about the assigned book Coming Through Slaughter. Although this book is about the life of the infamous Buddy Bolden it also is about the history that connects to him and what New Orleans was like during the time he was alive. We literally got to visit the exact area where he grew up in New Orleans, which was quite surreal. One of my favorite things about this class and one of the reasons why I liked Coming Through Slaughter was because of the fact that it was about a real person and this class focuses on learning about the past and just how important it is for how things are today in this historical city. As the days go on and this trip comes closer to ending, it truly saddens me. Not only am I sad about possibly leaving the people that I now consider friends, I am sad to not continue learning more about New Orleans while being here. There is and always will be much more to learn, day after day.