Ani DiFranco had plans for a "righteous" feminist retreat in White Castle, LA. where her fans could pay to join her for a seminar in songwriting and performance against a beautiful Louisiana backdrop.
The only problem was that the retreat was scheduled to take place at The Nottoway Plantation, a now-resort and museum formerly owned by a sugar planter and slave master named John Hampden Randolph, according to the plantation's official website. DiFranco has since apologized for her controversial choice.
After the event was posted to Facebook, hundreds of people spoke out against DiFranco's decision on social media, with dozens arguing on the Facebook event's page about DiFranco's choice to host a feminist retreat at a place that, while historical and beautiful, was a site of immense suffering and brutality towards African-Americans in the pre-Civil War Antebellum South. Some commenters likened it to hosting a Jewish retreat at the site of a concentration camp.
Nottoway Plantation, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is privately owned by Nottoway Plantation Inc., which is owned by the Paul Ramsay Group, as PQ Monthly writes. Ironically, healthcare mogul Paul Ramsay, its investor, is known for donating half a million dollars to conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s election campaign, facts that have not fared well for the very liberal DiFranco.
In response to the hundreds of comments and petition on Charge.org urging DiFranco to cancel the event, she did just that, writing a detailed response to the criticism on her Righteous Babe blog.
"I have heard you: all who have voiced opposition to my conducting a writing and performing seminar at the Nottoway Plantation," she wrote. "When I found out it was to be held at a resort on a former plantation, I thought to myself, 'whoa,' but I did not imagine or understand that the setting of a plantation would trigger such collective outrage or result in so much high velocity bitterness," she wrote. "I imagined instead that the setting would become a participant in the event...as to the matter of the current owner of the resort and his political leanings, that was brought to my attention yesterday and it does disturb me."
Click here to read Ani DiFranco's full blog post in response to the event's cancellation.
