Are you attending the AWP 2025 conference in L.A.?

Join the Slowdown Show for a live off-site event with me, Major,

Padraq O'Tuma, Jason Snyderman, and Samia Bashir for poetry, conversation, and some fun and games.

Friday, March 28th at 7 p.m. at the Crawford in Pasadena.

Tickets at laist.com slash events.

I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

A history buff, I have journey to many historic sites throughout the country.

On one occasion, I visited a sugar plantation.

This was during my years in New Orleans.

Although I have always been curious about Monticello,

I'll probably never tour a plantation again.

For obvious reasons, walking the grounds of Oak Alley was the most emotional of my historic visits.

This was unlike visiting the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, or Mark Twain's House in Hartford, Connecticut.

The meticulously maintained gardens and pastoral grounds with the view of the Mississippi River

belied a history of violence and subjugation.

This was back in the late 1990s.

The power of ethically presenting such history had not fully taken hold.

So the whole tour covered the story of the slave-holding families, Georgian architecture and furniture,

activities of the leisure class such as needlework and horseback riding.

Not one name of one enslaved African or that of one of their descendants was uttered.

Fortunately, today, I understand it is standard practice to minimally display census records.

Although the forced labor and contributions of enslaved men, women, and children were erased,

...