“Plantation” Atlas
A Redacted Heritage Atlas
a “Been Preservation” Member Talk + Launch of Black in Historic Preservation’s
Geospatial Digital Archive About Chattel Enslavement Interpretation in the US
Juneteenth
Fri., June 19, 2026
12:45pm EST - 2:00pm EST
About the Event
The plantation, i.e., forced labor camp, in the United States might be the quintessential building type and cultural heritage landscape associated with the history of Black life in the US and the origin story of the relationship between Black and White people in the country. And yet, this site-specific history of chattel enslavement is:
Not consistently interpreted at the forced labor camps today
Not consistently interpreted at the sites where forced labor camps once stood
Only associated with the North
Not associated with unconventional former sites of enslavement like colleges and universities
Black in Historic Preservation has taken on the challenge to change the above. Introducing, from its Preservation + Belonging Lab research initiative, (un)Redact the Facts, the Redacted History Atlas. The first of many atlases to launch from the digital mapping project is the “Plantation” Atlas. The “Plantation” Atlas is an interactive map of 1,200+ former forced-labor camps in the US. The first of its kind, the “Plantation” Atlas illustrates if and how these sites interpret chattel enslavement as of May 2026.
The launch, scheduled for June 19, 2026, will premiere the first two states with complete, “redacted history” profiles: Illinois and Arkansas. Yes, you read that right: Illinois and Arkansas. These two states and a few others are not the usual suspects when people think of “plantations” and US chattel enslavement, which makes an atlas like this all the more necessary. Join us on Juneteenth to learn more about this public resource.
Who is this for?
For preservationists, architects, students, grassroots advocates, cultural workers, historians, archivists, genealogists, people researching their family history, professors teaching historic preservation and allied fields such as archival science and archaeology, and more.
And if you watched the PBS documentary “Exposing the Myth of Southern Charm,” this atlas might be of special interest to you.
…
Research is an iterative process: it evolves as the researcher evolves their understanding of the subject they are researching.
In 2026, I developed three phrases to describe history, heritage, and culture that omit facts to protect the people associated with them: “redacted history,” “redacted heritage,” and “redacted culture.” The definitions complement the research I began in 2021 on what I call “redacted grammar and language.” These three phrases bolster the research initiative to one of a framework of cause and effect (all three are connected, one causes another) and to one of “problem and solution”: the solution to redacted history is (un)redacted history, written with what I call “(un)redacted grammar and language.” First, to align with a key principle of (un)Redact the Facts, name the doer of the action—let’s examine who is developing “redacted history” and subsequently defining their heritage, unconscious as it may be, as “redacted heritage”:
What is a “redacted culture?”
A group of people (racial, ethnic, familial, etc.) practices a culture: a behavior pattern of shared beliefs, values, and traditions. A group of people inherits its ancestors’ belongings, such as a building, called an inheritance or heritage. Heritage is also the practice of it, such as the grammar and language its descendants use to interpret it. Therefore, a redacted culture practices a redacted grammar and language.
And so, a “redacted culture,” a phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters, is a type of culture that interprets its heritage with redacted grammar and language, creating a “redacted story” or “redacted history” about it, transforming it into a “redacted heritage.”
“Redacted culture” appears with “redacted history” and “redacted heritage” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”
What is “redacted history?”
A phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters, a “redacted history” is a story that omits facts about the past that hold people of the past accountable for harming others and, if (un)redacted, would illustrate how they and their descendants benefited from the historical harm.
A group of people practices a “redacted culture” that creates a “redacted history” about its heritage, transforming it into a “redacted heritage.”
“Redacted history” creates psychological distance between people who practice a “redacted culture” as perpetrators of harm, in the past, present, and future in their minds and in the minds of others. This psychological distance is a documented trait of the key element of redacted grammar and language: the passive voice (example: “they were enslaved”) (Chan and Maglio, 2020). Racial groups, etc., who embrace a “redacted history” accept only the parts of their history that make them feel good, cast themselves in a glorious, valorous, and victorious light, and bolster their sense of belonging. Their history is a redacted one, a “redacted history,” because it omits facts that would shed light on the harmful parts of their culture and the fullness of their humanity, i.e., both their light and their shadow sides. The resulting denial of one’s full humanity from practicing “redacted history” makes practicing it harm the people who practice it, too.
“Redacted history” appears with “redacted heritage” and “redacted culture” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”
What is “redacted heritage?”
A phrase developed by preservation architect and history interpretation researcher k. kennedy Whiters, “redacted heritage” is a type of heritage or inheritance, such as a historic building, transformed by its descendants with redacted history that omits their ancestors’ harmful behavior associated with the heritage, to preserve the comfort and dominance of their group (racial, ethnic, etc.) within a social hierarchy, like a race-based caste system.
Cultures, the shared behavior of racial groups/ethnicities/groups of people, that embrace this “redacted heritage,” use what Whiters describes as “redacted grammar and language,” such as the passive voice (example: “they were enslaved”), to interpret the harmful actions and those of their ancestors that took place at historic sites, creating a redacted history about the sites. This redacted history omits their race/ethnicity in narratives and interpretations of the site-specific historical traumas they caused others to experience, transforming the historic sites into “redacted heritage.”
Heritage includes tangible and intangible things people inherit from their ancestors. The tangible, such as a building, and the intangible, like the grammar and language a culture uses to interpret the building’s past, are all part of a culture’s heritage. Heritage creates culture. What a group of people inherits from its ancestors defines who they are in the present: their culture.
“Redacted heritage” appears with “redacted history” and “redacted culture” as “redacted culture, history, and heritage,” or “redacted history, heritage, and culture,” or “redacted heritage, history, and culture.”
…
Be kind to yourself and others.
Research notes on the development of: “Redacted Heritage”, “Redacted History,” and “Redacted Culture”:
For anyone who might feel intimidated by the difference between “heritage” and “culture,” consider doing what I did and start with an initial Internet search for “is heritage the same as culture.” A link to my results: click here.
This search and reflection on the results helped me gain clarity on the differences between the roots of each word in these phrases, particularly “heritage” and “culture.”
Highlights from the search:
1- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) distinction between heritage and culture (site visited June 8, 2026):
“ Heritage versus culture’ refers to the distinction between heritage, which encompasses the traditions, monuments, and artifacts inherited from past generations, and culture, which includes the contemporary practices, beliefs, and values of a society.”
2- The Hidden Branch’s “Tuesday Tips #23 Heritage Vs. Culture” provides a comparison between the two but limits heritage to only tangible belongings such as a chair or building:
https://thehiddenbranch.com/tuesday-tips-23-heritage-vs-culture/
3- Of the sources I reviewed, the one that proved to be the most helpful was the explanation provided by the Open University, an exempt charity based in England and Wales, and registered in Scotland. This free online educational resource shared an expanded definition of heritage, with many cited sources:
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/what-heritage/content-section-2.1
Resources that I refer to for developing (un)Redact the Facts and a few new ones, Clark and Ehrlich, who explore how people use language to avoid holding people who sexually assault accountable:
Chan, Eugene Y, and Sam J Maglio. “The Voice of Cognition: Active and Passive Voice Influence Distance and Construal.” Personality & social psychology bulletin vol. 46,4 (2020): 547-558. doi:10.1177/0146167219867784
Clark, Kate. “The linguistics of blame: Representations of women in The Sun’s reporting of crimes of sexual violence.” Language, text and context: Essays in stylistics (1992): 208-224. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315402383
ABSTRACT
“In our society, men commit acts of violence on women every day. All women’s lives are affected by this: by actual violence or by the fear of it. For this reason, the messages that a popular newspaper engenders in its reporting of such crimes are critical. In this study of reports by The Sun newspaper (a tabloid daily with the largest circulation of all the British dailies) of male violence against women and girls, I am interested in who is blamed for an attack and how language is used to convey that blame.”
Ehrlich, S. (2015). Sexual violence, language of. In The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality (eds A. Bolin and P. Whelehan). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118896877.wbiehs463
ABSTRACT
“Research examining representations of sexual violence against women and children has identified some recurring linguistic patterns. These include (1) the obscuring of perpetrator responsibility and the assigning of blame to “sexually available” women; and (2) depicting violence and assault in terms normally associated with consensual sex.”
Jordan, June, “Problems of Language in a Democratic State, 1982;” in On Call. Political Essays, South End Press, Boston, MA, 1985, pp. 27-36.
Jordan, like Clark and Ehlich, uses the example of rape to illustrate how people use language to protect the person who raped. And, it has led me to reflect on how the person who received the nonconsensual sex might use the passive voice to not only protect the person who raped them, but to protect themselves from further abuse from that person. There is a throughline in how people, in general, use redacted grammar and language to describe their experiences in power dynamics to protect themselves from further harm.
Black in Historic Preservation is a program of wrkSHäp | kiloWatt, a Black woman-owned historic preservation studio owned and operated by k. kennedy Whiters, RA. Support Black in Historic Preservation by becoming a member or supporter today: click here. Members can submit essays for publication on Black in Historic Preservation’s Substack.
k. kennedy Whiters, RA is an architect who earned licenses to practice in New York and Washington State, a published writer, an artist, and a business owner. She is the founder of wrkSHäp | kiloWatt, a design studio that specializes in historic preservation, owner’s representation/construction project management, and history communications/interpretations, as well as studio kW Architecture + Preservation. kennedy has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Trust for Historic Preservation Mildred Colodny Fellowship. In 2021, she founded Black in Historic Preservation, (un)Redact the Facts, and Beyond Integrity in (X). And on occasion, she hugs a tree and a building or two.