Women's Lifestyle February 24, 2026 0 Comments

How Natchez’s Black History Secrets Are Powering a Booming Business You Won’t Believe

Ever walked into a town where history isn’t just a backdrop but a full-on performance? Welcome to Natchez, Mississippi—a place where antebellum nostalgia is bottled up and sold on tour routes, wrapped in romantic tales that often gloss over some pretty harsh realities. Toward the end of the documentary Natchez, we meet David Garner, an elderly white gay man who proudly champions the town’s legacy, even as his words stir discomfort you can’t just scroll past. It’s wild, right? Here’s a blue dot perched in a red state, where white queer influence keeps the Southern fantasy alive, even as the shadows of slavery loom large and uncompromising. But what happens when that gloss meets unfiltered truth? Director Suzanne Herbert dives deep into this clash—the showy spectacle vs. the raw, often painful history told from Black perspectives standing on sacred soil. So, do we choose comfort in comforting myths or confront the mirage head-on? Trust me, this isn’t just a history lesson; it’s a reckoning weighing heavy on every street corner and tour stop. LEARN MORE

5 min read

Toward the end of the new documentary Natchez, viewers have an extended scene with tour guide David Garner. Garner is an elderly white gay man, proud of his town. Natchez, Mississippi, is a place where the nostalgia of antebellum slavery is incorporated and romanticized into the modern tour industry. Natchez is also a blue dot in a red state. Let the queer community tell it and Natchez would’ve lost its luster a long time ago had it not been for the efforts of white gay men like Garner. Inspired by experiencing historic tours through the Deep South herself, director Suzanne Herbert centers on this river town because of its collision between the present and its past and how that history is told to visitors.

Up until this scene in the documentary, Garner’s presence adds a slight comedic flair and lightness to this heavy subject. Until its ending. Garner repetitively uses the N-word in his tours and even gives an anecdote of telling Hillary Clinton that her issue was trying to placate Black people alongside white folk.

As I watched, I wondered why we didn’t cut to another scene, as his tone and ire toward Black folk would not cease. Then again, that discomfort is necessary. It would be too easy for one to look away. That would be a kind of erasure, and Herbert is most interested in showing how the perpetuation of Southern myth and lore is not solely symbolic or entertaining. There is always harm as an undercurrent.

Tim Graham

The old Shoppers Emporium in Natchez

The Forks of the Road slave market in Natchez was once the second-largest slave market in the Deep South, after New Orleans. This market made the white citizens of Natchez unbelievably rich; prior to the Civil War, Natchez had the highest concentration of millionaires in the United States. For the Black people enslaved there, of course, it was a different story. When the transatlantic slave trade was banned in 1808, more than 200,000 enslaved people were forcibly migrated from the Upper to Deep South and sold at Forks of the Road. They’d have to walk 800 miles for approximately nine weeks. Barefoot. Tracy “Rev” Collins, a Black pastor and tour guide, tells his group in the documentary that enslaved bodies would be sold for $2,000, whereas in Virginia they might go for $600.

Today, the former slave market is located right across from a red muffler shop called Natchez Exhaust. The white owner, 64-year-old Gene Williams, refuses to leave, despite getting offers from the National Park Service to own the property. On Williams’s exact property is where the nation’s largest slave traders in history, Franklin and Armfield, operated. The site is a prime example of America’s contradictory understanding of place: Is this a space to recognize the trafficking and enslaving of human beings, or is this a place to enforce loyalty to private property?

“I don’t know what the Forks of the Road is supposed to prove,” Williams says in a scene while standing within his shop. He argues that those speaking to its history are “promoting the memory of something that was bad.”

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Mammy’s Cupboard in Natchez

Hearing this, I thought, “Who said anything about wanting to prove something? It happened.” There is ample literature on the location. There are descendants scattered all across America whose ancestors were likely sold through that market. Still, “It’s over and done with,” Williams insists.

I don’t write to prove slavery’s horrors and consequences. But I do write to speak to how we are all existing within the afterlife of slavery. It may be “done” legally, but it’s not over in the hearts and minds of those who are cultural memory workers, historians, and storytellers.

Slavery is definitely not “over” in Natchez. As a director, Herbert definitely knows this. If it were, the entire tourism industry would collapse. After the boll weevil ravaged their community in the 1930s, it was institutions like the Garden Club that romanticized the antebellum South for visitors. Tracey McCartney, one of the featured women, cosplays as Scarlett O’Hara during tours at Choctaw Hall. White tour guides have pictures and memories of Spring Pilgrimages where the youth would be crowned king and queen. The young men would wear the Confederate uniforms of their ancestors.

At the same time, according to Debbie Cosey, the first Black member of the Garden Club and owner of the Concord Quarters, a bed and breakfast in former slave quarters, Black Natchez citizens would watch these festivities and consider them a slap to the face. She continues in the documentary that interested parties to Concord Quarters would get the story behind the main house, where a script of what actually happened would not be tailored and palatable for a wider audience.

Tim Graham

A city street in Natchez

In history, one will encounter multiple vantage points and perspectives depending on the subject. But also, with history, what is often emphasized are the accounts of white people. What makes this documentary most engaging and nuanced are that power plays across multiple intersections. Despite Natchez’s strong queer communities, Natchez’s white queer people and white people are united in their cultural conservatism, promoting tours that glorify the city’s past as a major economic engine for mass enslavement. In contrast, the tours run by Black guides are characterized not by lunches inside halls and mayoral visits but by car rides and history lessons while standing right on sacred soil. The white tour guides indulge in fantasy and entertainment, while the Black tour guides are beholden to honoring their ancestral labor and sacrifice, without any gloss or pizzazz to the stories.

With re-creation and seriousness operating within the same town yet not shared across color lines, there is no wonder why Herbert was drawn to Natchez and its people. The participants’ stories reveal how both white and Black tours are staking their claim to a past that would have once erased the latter and centered the former. For a visitor, the choice of which tour to go on is not simply a case of availability but rather a choice between comfort in reinforcing a Southern fantasy or undermining that mirage altogether.