Mecklenburg County to reopen former slave plantation as educational site
Mecklenburg County wants to reopen a historic site just north of Charlotte — a former slave plantation now called Latta Place — with plans for a new design, educational programming and name.
The plantation was renamed in February, but closed after organizers last year promoted a racist Juneteenth event. County officials are working with Virginia-based Design Minds, Inc., to create a comprehensive new format that would include a more complete story of life on the plantation with exhibits showing the lasting impact of slavery in Mecklenburg County.
Kass Ottley, who led the protest against the Latta Plantation Juneteenth event last year, said she felt hopeful about the first draft of the plan and that discomfort is necessary for growth.
“You go to a Holocaust museum and you learn the history and feel the pain for the Jewish people. Why is it not different at Latta Plantation? Why are they not teaching the history of those Africans that were enslaved?” Ottley said. “It’s because white people don’t want to feel uncomfortable. Nothing ever changes when you’re comfortable.”
While county government is still taking community feedback and finalizing its plan for the site, Latta Place will prioritize the truth about what happened on the plantation, said District 1 County Commissioner Elaine Powell, who represents north Mecklenburg where the plantation is located.
In 1800, James Latta built a home on the 742-acre plantation and at one point owned 34 enslaved people who harvested cotton on the land, according to Sankofa’s Slavery Data Collection, a database created by a New York-based librarian.
Dan Aldridge, chair and professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College, said it’s important to preserve and tell the story of plantations and acknowledge the presence of slaves.
“It’s a real part of our history,” Aldridge said. “We have to accept what the past was like both things that are comfortable and things that are uncomfortable.”
How will Latta Place change?
Initial plans for Latta place published to the county’s website in December show options that include living history exhibits, a research center and in-person interpretation.
One option presented in the design shows a new visitors center, new replica slave dwellings and a gazebo. Another design option shows a smaller visitors center, public art and expanded parking. The final design option shows no new visitors center with exhibits added in existing historical structures.
“There are many ways to tell the stories of the county’s historic properties,” Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Director Lee Jones said. “It’s likely that the final recommendations will be a blended fourth option that considers community and stakeholder feedback and these initial recommendations.”
The final draft is expected this spring and will be presented to the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners after, according to parks and recreation staff. The board will receive community feedback before approving the plan. The plantation will reopen in phases.
The draft plans say the site is expected to be used as an elementary and middle school field trip destination to teach students more about Black history. Expected takeaways from the exhibit presented in the plan include the history of slavery and its long-lasting effects, relationships between the enslaved and those who enslaved them, African cultural origins of enslaved people and Reconstruction.
“We’re inviting people to open their minds to history,” Powell said. “When people have not had any experience with the enslaved except for in textbooks, how do you bring that to life to take them out of the bubble?”
Potential names for the historic site floated in the plan include:
▪ Mecklenburg Legacy Center
▪ Latta Education and Cultural Center
▪ Mecklenburg Center for Historical Research
▪ Mecklenburg Center for the Study of Slavery
Inspiration from other historical plantations
Aldridge has visited several historic plantations. None are perfect examples for places to learn about slavery’s history, he said. Monticello and Mount Vernon, where Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned hundreds of slaves, acknowledged slavery, but not to an extent representative of their role in the plantation system, he said.
The county put together a group of community partners — including the North Carolina Museums Council, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts & Culture and The Brooklyn Collective — to visit different historical sites around the country for inspiration. They’ve been to 18 so far, Powell said.
Ottley said she would like to join the community partners group and told The Charlotte Observer she wants the county to consider the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, which honors and teaches the history of the enslaved people who once lived on the site.
“I just feel like in Charlotte they pick the same people to be on these boards and these panels and they need to broaden this out to include those who are most impacted,” Ottley said.
One way to do that is to track down living relatives of those enslaved on the property and include them in conversations, she said.
“Some of the family members and descendants of the enslaved need to be on the panel to have input on how their ancestors’ stories are being told,” Ottley said. “It can also be healing to the family.”
What led to the plantation’s rebranding
In June 2021, the Latta Plantation — which is owned by the county but was managed by a nonprofit offering history and education programs — promoted an event sympathetic to those who owned slaves in the wake of the Civil War, the Observer previously reported.
The event was timed to Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the United States. But it referred to freed slaves as “former bondsmen.” The event description promised to tell the story of “white refugees” and defeated Confederate soldiers while inaccurately minimizing an unnamed slaveowner to an “overseer” and referred to him as “massa.”
The plantation quickly received widespread backlash — from the community through social media channels, as well as government officials, including Mayor Vi Lyles.
“It was just blatantly disrespectful,” Ottley said.
A few days later, the Mecklenburg Park and Recreation Department announced that the plantation would be closed until further notice, and that officials would “evaluate the best path forward” over the next few months.
The county did not renew its contract with Historic Latta Place.
This story was originally published January 2, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
