A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir

by Jason Timbuktu Diakité

person in Florida was denied the right to vote due to having spent time in prison. The fact that so many have been robbed of their civil rights and the opportunity for decent employment is evidence that many states in the US still have an oppressed lower class not unlike the one that existed during the time of slavery. As I stand outside the gates and watch the white families in their sun hats pass through the showy entryway into the flowery garden at Oak Alley Plantation, I muse that the whitewashing of the bloody history of Louisiana and the USA is the greatest factor in why the inequalities are never evened out. The yoke of history can never be cast off if you don’t first recognize that history for what it was. For the tour guides to wear those wide period dresses that the slave owners’ daughter and wives wore while the slaves were whipped behind the house is like going on a guided tour of Auschwitz led by someone in an SS uniform. I feel only anger, disgust, and hatred. An admission ticket costs twenty-five dollars. More than any descendants of slaves in the area likely can afford or have interest in sparing, and this is to hear someone clad in the uniform of oppression talk about how wonderful it was to sit on the wide verandas and drink mint juleps in the shade while chatting about embroidery and village gossip. It’s a slap in the face to those who died, bled, and toiled on these grounds, who brought in the money that allowed the house to be built and silk to be impo...