Curtained behind a tall fence and a border of other trees and shrubs grows the short but dramatic allee of six oaks at Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA, directly upriver from Evergreen Plantation.  The allee of oaks is not particularly old, possibly 60 to 70 years, but the trees are beautiful and create a rich green canopy between the manor house and River Road. The trees were reportedly planted in the 1950s, around the same time as Evergreen Plantation’s farm road allee.  

The entire Whitney Plantation complex is a museum – the only museum in Louisiana where the focus is entirely on the lives of enslaved people across Louisiana and the South and the conditions in which they lived and died.  During your visit to the inside displays and the self-guided tour (under the pandemic restrictions), you will learn about the history of slavery—from the “middle passage” (the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to north and south America) to southern plantations. The museum is educational and informative, providing visitors with a raw, unfiltered picture of the horrific experience of slavery.  It is not a tour for the faint of heart or for those who do not wish to face the truth of horrors of the slave experience.  

The complex of buildings on the property includes at least a dozen historic structures dating back to the late 1700s as well as the historic Antioch Baptist Church (below).

Moved from Paulina on the east bank of the Mississippi River after being replaced by a newer structure, the church building was erected in 1870 by the Anti-Yoke Society. It was the only African-American church in the immediate area, and was built by former slaves of several River Road plantations. 

Visitors will also interact with a variety of sculptural and memorial displays scattered around the plantation grounds, beginning with a group of contemporary clay sculptures by Woodrow Nash of slave children that visitors find inside the Antioch church where the tour begins.

These haunting life-size children turn up in various settings around the site. Their effect is make the visitor view the entire setting from a different perspective, possibly through the eyes of slave children. Other displays and memorials include the “Midlow Wall,” a series of angled granite walls engraved with the names of enslaved individuals, much like the famous Vietnam wall in Washington DC.

Other than me, I’d guess that no one visits Whitney Plantation just to see its allée of live oaks. But, since the focus of my photography as primarily been to document the historic oaks of Louisiana and the human stories connected with them, this allee is worth seeing and appreciating. And the entire Whitney Tour will be an enlightening and contrasting experience to both tourists and locals.