FULL NY Times story is HERE.
"Women in hoop dresses ushered visitors one April morning into the grand old house known as Riverview, showing off the hand-carved wooden chairs, oil paintings, tapestries and gilded mirrors brought from around the world to the estate in Mississippi.
The house stood as a testament to the prosperity that had flowed before the Civil War in Southern cities like Columbus, just over the border from Alabama, as fertile soil and the labor of enslaved workers built fortunes.
It was also a highlight of the longstanding tradition known as Pilgrimage. Every spring, the city’s finest antebellum homes are opened to the public for a few weeks, inviting people in to marvel at the craftsmanship and the opulence.
The event took its name from the belief among its organizers that Pilgrimage was just that — a journey to houses whose grandeur, scale and history represent something sacred for Mississippi and all of the South. Homeowners and docents often dress in period clothing to facilitate the time travel.
“We have a culture here that is something to be admired and respected,” said Dick Leike, the owner of Riverview. “This is a prime example of it.”
But these days, some in Columbus are finding it difficult to justify a
trip to a gauzy version of the city’s past without accounting for the
suffering, injustice and violence associated with the slave labor that
built and ran these homes. That has led to competing ideas about the
scope of Pilgrimage and the story it is supposed to tell."
There is no shortage of similar stories on this side of the Mississippi/Alabama border either.
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