Plantations may seem like a black and white issue, but they never truly are. What appears black and white quickly blurs into gray—gray created by intertwined bloodlines, complex storylines, and centuries of omission. At the heart of that gray space are descendants of the enslaved, like myself, caught in the middle of it all.

The recent fire at Nottoway Plantation, which reduced the “big house” to ashes, serves as a stark reminder of the complexities we navigate to uncover the truth of our history.

Our ancestors were essential to these plantations, yet their stories are rarely given center stage. If they are mentioned on tours, it’s often only because they were considered “interesting,” “talented,” or “magical” enough to be added as a subplot. Meanwhile, we—their descendants, still grappling with the legacy of slavery—are lucky to receive even a footnote.

Still, we persist. We endure tone-deaf tours, cringeworthy “bachelorette get-a-way” marketing, and tourists taking selfies in front of former slave quarters. We trade comfort for clarity, and peace of mind for just one more piece to the puzzle of our ancestors’ stories—and, by extension, our own.

As a Black woman stewarding two plantation houses in Louisiana, my relationship with these places is anything but black and white. In fact, I’m writing this from the porch of one of those plantations, taking cover from an incoming storm. I can’t help but wonder: Is my shelter here a sign of how far we’ve come, or a reminder of how far we still have to go? The sky overhead turns a familiar shade of gray.

Stewarding plantation houses isn’t easy. There’s always something to repair. Their past, however, can’t be fixed like windows. But through my work with The Descendants Project, a nonprofit organization I co-founded with my twin sister Joy, I’m committed to using these painful legacies—and these physical spaces—to uplift our Black communities.

That’s why the loss of Nottoway saddens me. Not because of what it was, but because of what it could have been—in the hands of its Black descendants.

Still, I know the true history of Nottoway, like all plantations, doesn’t reside in the big house or even in the land. It lives within the Black descendant community. And that community is still under threat—from the same plantation-to-pollution legacy that has transformed our lands, like my community of Wallace, into Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.”

Preserving the past is vital. But so is protecting the future—and the health—of Black descendant communities. As conversations begin about restoring Nottoway, we must also restore something more meaningful: the rightful place of Black descendants in these narratives and the urgent fight for their survival.

That’s not just history—it’s our reality. And that truth should be as clear as black and white.

Banner and her twin sister Joy Banner founded The Descendants Project, which stewards the Woodland Plantation.