A Poetic Defiance: What I Never Told Anyone About My Wedding Venue

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how interconnected our stories can be.

Fifteen years ago, on May 15, we chose to marry in an antebellum home/plantation in Natchez, Mississippi.

When I shared our venue with my parents and elders in our family, they cringed. Being only four generations removed from slavery, Natchez — especially its plantations — carried a heaviness, an air not historically considered “friendly” to Black people.

They fought me from every angle, trying to convince me otherwise.

“Why on earth would you want to marry on a plantation where our ancestors suffered?”

“We marry in the church, not on plantations.”

It became an ongoing debate for months. But in my strong will, I remained certain: Dunleith would be the place. And to make my decision even more intentional, I chose to do it on a Sunday morning.

What I never told anyone was why.

In 2005, I met my husband on the campus of Jackson State University at 1400 John R. Lynch Street. To some, “J.R. Lynch Street” was simply the street our dear old college home sat upon.

But to me, it meant far more.

Growing up in Mississippi, we were taught about John Roy Lynch as one of the first Black congressmen in American history. But what stayed with me most was not simply who he became — it was where he began.

John Roy Lynch and his mother were both enslaved, brought from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, to Routhland — later known as Dunleith Plantation in Natchez. As a little boy, he worked there as a Punkah Wallah, a house servant responsible for pulling ropes for hours to fan plantation owners in the Mississippi heat and keep flies from their tables during dinner service.

There was an art to being a Punkah Wallah. You sat quietly, attempting not to be noticed. You breathed lightly, yet worked tirelessly — moving quietly but steadily, carrying the responsibility of ensuring the fanning never stopped.

He was invisible enough to disappear into the walls.

He heard conversations not meant for him.

He was forced to study power while never being acknowledged by it.

He existed as a fixture — almost a part of the house itself.

And yet somehow, from that very place emerged a man who would later become free — then a Congressman, author, attorney, and one of the most important Black political figures of Reconstruction.

So years later, when I stood on that same property as a Black woman — educated, free, deeply loved — marrying the man I met on a street carrying his name, I understood something my spirit had already known.

I was not celebrating the plantation.

I was honoring survival.

Honoring transcendence.

Honoring the fullness of what it means to reclaim space, memory, and history.

I dressed in rooms where Black women once labored unseen.

Our family and friends dined and were servef in spaces where ancestors, like John Roy Lynch, likely stood serving for hours, instead of seated.

My wedding cake rested in dining rooms once reserved for power that never imagined descendants like me would one day gather there freely, joyfully, fully human.

And that mattered to me.

Not because I romanticize the South or the horrors tied to those spaces.

But because there was something spiritually profound about returning to a place rooted in pain and filling it instead with love, laughter, music, dancing, prayer, and legacy.

A Black woman.

A Black man.

A Black family.

Celebrating covenant and joy in a place where our existence once would have been reduced to labor and pain alone.

That was never lost on me.

Sometimes reclaiming does not look like erasing history.

Sometimes reclaiming looks like surviving it long enough to rewrite the experience within it.

I guess you could say I’ve always been defiant — but in a poetic way.

The kind of defiance that does not erase history, but walks directly through it.

The kind that refuses to let pain have the final word.

Them: “What is your why?”

Me: “My ancestors are watching.”

Dunleith — along with several other antebellum homes and plantations in Natchez, Mississippi — are discussed in the PBS documentary, Exposing the Myth of Southern Charm.

I’d encourage you to watch it when you find time. It offers an honest glimpse into the complicated culture and history of Mississippi — the beauty, the pain, the contradictions, and the truths that still linger beneath the surface.

You can view it here: PBS Documentary on YouTube

#InformationIsPower