Southern Nightmare

Imagine bed-and-breakfasts and gift shops at Auschwitz, Poland; at the Manzanar camp in California; and at the spot in the New Mexico desert where trainloads of Mexican strikers were abandoned without food or water in 1917. “Plantation Revelation” (Jan. 17) conjured up such images.

During a break from a conference in Charleston, S.C., some colleagues and I visited a plantation not far from the city. Like other tourists, we wanted to enjoy the beauty of the antebellum South.

We spent an hour on a guided tour, listening to stories of gentility, luxury and culture.

On our own, we also strolled through the garden, and we eventually came to the mud-floor, wood-slat homes the slaves once occupied. We gagged at the stench. We walked into the woods behind the mansion as mosquitoes attacked us, perspiration rolled down our necks and arms, and the sharp weeds stuck to our pants and socks.

We were in America’s backyard, an America to which the tour guide only alluded.

The docent mentioned that more than 200 slaves worked the plantation; however, the quarters provided room for only 100 or so. The excess were ordered to make hovels in the rat- and snake-infested woods.

Institutions of exploitation, brutality and genocide don’t always appear so beautiful from a minority perspective.

DANIEL CANO

Santa Monica

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On a 1996 trip to Charleston, S.C., and the various historical plantations and buildings, my sister and I were astonished at the attempts by the docents to deal with, or rather avoid, the issue of the slave labor so important to the growth of the South. Thanks for bringing this issue out into the open.

VALENA B. DISMUKES

Los Angeles