When the Big House Burns: The Nottoway Plantation Fire & Reckoning with Historical Symbols in Our Workplaces

Last week, the Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana caught fire, burning the country’s largest remaining antebellum mansion in the south to the ground. The 1850s plantation warped what should have been a monument and sacred ground to the enslaved Africans who suffered on it into a resort and wedding venue.

This symbol of exploitation and whitewashed memory quite literally going up in flames reminded me that this was about more than just about a building. It’s about what—and who—our society chooses to remember, chooses to protect, and what we’re told to regard in the spaces we move through every day, including our workplaces.

When “History” Is Rebranded

For years, the Nottoway Plantation was sold as a picturesque destination for Southern weddings, conferences, and more. The glossy brochures and online reviews breezed over the fact that the estate was built and maintained by enslaved peoples. They called it a resort, while I see it for what it was: the worst of White Supremacy Culture dressed in white linen, chandeliers, and an Instagrammable aesthetic. 

This kind of rebranding and ignoring a violent past extends from the very plantations that were the origins of America as we know it, to institutions that have never meaningfully grappled with the inequities they were built upon. We see it when universities rename buildings that were once dedicated to racists, but don’t shift power structures. Or when a Black face is appointed to a high space without the support that it will take to do the job successfully. Or when a DEI initiative is launched without taking accountability for who was excluded from leadership for decades. Or when a company celebrates diversity while still policing the language, hair, tone, and culture of its Black employees.

Nottoway’s history can’t just be chalked up to the past, because it has shaped, and continues to shape our present. 

The Emotional Labor of Memory

Black professionals often carry an invisible weight into the workplace: the pressure to navigate institutions that were not built for us, while remaining “grateful” to be in the room. We’re expected to assimilate, lead, and inspire, all while somehow ignoring the racist and anti-Black truths baked into the DNA of our organizations. 

How much longer must we honor institutions that have never honored us? How many of us are working in places that celebrate legacy while silencing truth? How many are asked to smile in spaces that refuse to reckon with their past or present harms?

What Still Needs to Burn?

The fire at Nottoway symbolizes the many monuments to White Supremacy Culture that still need to crumble. The metaphorical “big houses” still standing in the form of boardrooms, hiring practices, pay structures, and outdated definitions of professionalism are just a drop in the bucket of the things that must be transformed and transmuted in the workplace. Some legacies do not deserve preservation, and when we encounter that, we have to dream up new ways of being that are built on equity and inclusion. The presence of Black folks in White spaces alone is not change; the system itself must shift too.

Reckoning is a requirement, not optional. Leaders should be asking: Whose stories have we erased? What symbols do we uphold? How do we create environments that center truth and not tradition for tradition’s sake?