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My mother, who died in 2000, was also a Northerner. Born and raised in New Jersey, she spent her entire life in the Northeast, except for a brief tenure as dietitian at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she was miserable; she left rapidly, claiming to have gained nothing except a love for grits and the knowledge of how to cook them properly. While my own tendencies ran to the study of the African continent and its diaspora, my mother, though always a willing traveler, was more intrigued by the cathedrals of Europe than the Candomblé houses of Brazil. I was astonished, therefore, when our affinities coincided in New Orleans. In 1998, when I bought a home there, she immediately understood the city’s magic and visited frequently. She set about making herself a part of the lives of my friends in that town, which is a noteworthy conjoining of Africa and Europe. Her early training as a dietitian left her with a lifelong love of food, and in New Orleans, with its vibrant food culture, many memorable meals were shared with the new friends who became our adopted family. With her questing mind and her artistic talents, she quickly became everyone’s surrogate mother and delighted in her new role.

One of my friends, discovering that neither my mother nor I had visited the River Road, decided to drive us to see the glories of the state’s plantation past. Taking off to explore tourist-like, neither of us had any idea of the impact the trip would have. The first stop was Laura Plantation, a French Creole dwelling that was nothing like the Tara-esque images that my mother had envisioned. More like a raised country house, it had none of the majesty and presence expected by one whose images of the plantation South had been formed by Gone with the Wind (the film not the book!). We were intrigued by its similarity to homes that we’d seen in the French Carib be an, but caught up in the myth of white pillars and sweeping lawns, it did not visually define a slaveholding past for us. However, the slave cabins on the grounds were a harbinger of things to come.

At Evergreen Plantation, there were more slave cabins. While they were certainly depressing, in truth, many looked like the wooden shacks that we’d seen dotting some of the secondary roads—and some even seemed to be in better shape. The double row of cabins, though, coupled with the knowledge that 103 enslaved people lived on the plantation in 1860, brought the realities of enslavement closer to home, but we didn’t tarry there.

The next stop was Tezcuco Plantation, which has since burned down. It was then home to a fledgling African American museum, and as we walked through the small museum, I could see my mother’s demeanor change. As we read the captions and examined the potbellied stove and the other meager artifacts lovingly displayed, she began to have that pensive look I knew too well. Lunch was at Tezcuco with our friends and the museum’s founder, Kathe Ham-brick Jackson. There, over Southern food that was nowhere as good as Mom’s, we talked about Hambrick Jackson’s plans for expanding the museum. I noticed that Mom’s conversation had become “careful.” We’d have much to talk about when we returned to New Orleans. The friends we were riding with (who were white) were unaware of my mother’s inner turmoil, but I was attuned to her every move.

Ever polite, she soldiered on to the next stop, Houmas House, where we were greeted by a hoop-skirt-clad docent who regaled us with tales of the architecture and also of the home’s owners; in deference to the PC times, a word or two was given to those enslaved on the plantation as well. This plantation fit the profile; it had high white columns and a vast alley of venerable live oaks that ran down to the river. Majestic and monumental, it was a Palladian-style fantasy of power. My mother took me aside and whispered, “Who built this house?” I replied that I didn’t know but that probably much of the work had been done by the people enslaved on the plantation. She thought for a