Destrehan Plantation Announces New Tour

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:          
Nancy J. Robert
Executive Director
destplan@aol.com

DESTREHAN PLANTATION ANNOUNCES NEW TOUR

Destrehan Plantation, on the great River Road, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge will begin a new tour in honor of Black History Month.  Unheard Voices of the German Coast is a highly specialized tour that treats Destrehan Plantation as the backdrop for exploring diverse cultures.  Those cultures include the German-Acadians, the enslaved Africans, the Creole free people of color, and the Native Americans who contributed to the unique landscape of the German Coast during the first 100 years. 

The tour emphasizes personal, true-to-life accounts that invite visitors to step into the shoes of specific individuals in order to see the plantation as commoners, seeing the yard and work areas, but never looking down on the plantation estate from the upper gallery.  Unlike the regular tour, which focuses on artifacts, this tour relies on subtler visual cues, more audience participation, and a greater focus on the emotions experienced in the lives of the German Coast residents forced to live in the shadow of the planter class. 

The tour listens to the voices that are often silenced on plantation tours elsewhere, showing the tremendous diversity in day-to-day interactions along the German Coast and in New Orleans.  These daily interactions between Germans, French Creoles, Acadians, Africans, and Indians contributed to a cultural "gumbo" unique to southern Louisiana.

Tours will begin on February 23, and take place each Thursday and Saturday.  Tour length is 90 minutes.  For more information, contact Destrehan Plantation's business office at 985-764-9315 or email at DestPlan@aol.com.  View more information on the web site at http://www.destrehanplantation.org/.