Sunday, February 16, 2020
After a good time at last night’s parade, the
day started with a nice homemade breakfast of eggs and fried english muffins.
After breakfast, we took our first of many long car rides today down to St.
Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. It was raining, and we got there just in
time for the 9:00 Mass. After Mass, we looked around the cathedral and took
pictures. We walked, in the rain, down the street to Café du Monde. The beignets
there were unreal, with each of us eating 3 of these snack size fried doughs
with an added drink.
From Café du Monde, we ventured down the street to the
French Market. This is New Orleans’ attempt at a Quincy Market. While there, we
had an hour to eat and shop. The front part featured the food selections,
including the New Orleans staple of alligators on a stick, some hot sauce
selections, desserts, crepes, and other assortments of food. From the French
Market, we walked along the Mississippi River to get to the caravans. We took a
really long ride west to the Whitney Plantation. We got there in time for our
2:00 pm tour, and we began in the Antioch Baptist Church with a welcome video
and began for our roughly 90-minute tour of the property. This tour included
the slave quarters, the kitchen, the original “big house,” and many monuments
of the lives of former slaves. This tour was eye opening, as it explained to us
what really lead to the form of slavery, negating most of the things we learn
about in history class, and introducing us to a new form of the beginning of
slavery.
From there, we took another long car ride back to the NSUU
complex, and we stopped for Domino’s on the way home for our 6:00 pm race dialogue.
We met Rev. Melanie and listened to her. She also provided insight to us for
the definition of racism (in the United States), and elaborated on the point
that race is not biological, instead it’s a created classification system that
was used and has been adapted throughout these recent years. We’re ending the
night in the dining room, McLarnon just got snubbed in poker and we’re using
our beads from the parade last night as poker chips.
Jack Studley and Michael Deminico
