LARGEST REMAINING ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION MANSION BURNS DOWN

On 15 May, the Nottoway Plantation in the US state of Louisiana, the largest remaining antebellum (pre-Civil War) mansion in the US South, was reduced to ashes. 

Built in 1859 by enslaved Africans for sugar plantation owner John Hampden Randolph, the 4,923-square-metre mansion containing dozens of rooms stood as a stark symbol of the United States' history of slavery. 

The cause of the fire is still unknown, but the incident elicited reactions online. While some recognised the mansion’s seeming grandeur and painful racial past, Black people viewed the destruction as a form of symbolic justice, with the ashes representing their ancestors' suffering.