On My 15th 2025 the largest plantation of them all burned to the ground because of an electrical fire. The Nottoway Plantation with 53,000 square feet over three floors, 64 rooms was the grandest of them all. Sitting in White Castle Louisiana, with giant columns, wrap around porches and grand sitting rooms built in 1859 showcased the wealth brought by slavery for owner John Randolf. What was once a place of violent servitude evolved into a place of celebrations for weddings and selected touristic history. African Americans celebrated the pyric finality of the antebellum mansion built on the backs of ancestors in chains under a whip. The Black Social Media memes trended for days.
Up the river on the opposite stateside shore sits the oldest city on the Mississippi, Natchez, founded in 1716 in the heart of the Deep Cotton Belt. Grand houses lined leafy streets.
From the riches of human bondage, Natchez once had the highest concentration of wealth in the United States.
Suzannah Herbert’s absorbing, at times gut punching, documentary Natchez is a story of who tells the tale. Through 86 minutes the Memphis based director lets the camera roll on her subjects without interference or judgement. What comes through in the film is a wide divergence of opinions, institutional denial, classism, race and contradictions.
The first scene shows the real power in Natchez, The Women Garden Club’s gathering with the mayor. The city’s main source of income is Heritage Tourism and tours. Tourists come to see and learn how the Pre-Civil War Southern Aristocrats lived. Hosts regale visitors with genteel ancestral tales of sitting in magnificently decorated parlors while eating tea cakes, sipping tea in flowy hoop skirts served by the “workers”. The word “workers” is in the official script approved by the Garden Club.
Rewritten
On the other side of the tracks, the guided tours tilt to the rawer but spellbinding side. Reverend Collins perhaps has fewer tours, because he tells the horrible tale of rape and daily degradation in the life of a slave and the aftermath of the institution to the disbelief of his clients. For Collins, exposing the conscience cover up of the 400-year crime is the most important lesson for visitors. The history of slavery has been rewritten depending on who you ask.
The protagonists in Natchez view each other with mistrust. Each representing a narrative. As the tourist numbers and income fall, younger travellers are no longer interested in the “Gone with The Wind” romantic version of slavery Natchez finds itself at a crossroads. Either give a real accounting of how the city’s wealth built on cruelty or for stay with the same narrative yielding diminishing returns.
Herbert’s slow build story telling ability works well. The contrasting views ranging from pride, dismissive, incendiary to wilful ignorance are handled without a judging eye even if audiences could have difficulty identifying with the figures on the screen concocting a fantasy lifestyle of 19th century Southern Culture. This could have easily descended into comical vignettes, the filmmaker never loses her grip on the story. The focus stays on the different interpretations of the American Story.
Natchez does not pile on racial guilt or morality. That is the charm, instead the film allows the audience to figure out the truth.
Screened online at the Tribeca Film Festival.