Let That Fucker Burn (John Chenvert - Napoleonville, LA)

Let that fucker burn.

Let the fire crackle like the whips once did—
like bone meeting leather,
like screams swallowed by the trees.

Let the white columns crumble to ash.
Not as tragedy—
but as truth,
unearthing itself
from beneath generations of silence.

Nottoway is not a mansion.
It’s a mausoleum.
A lie carved in stone
to honor the hands that held the whip,
not the backs that bore it.

They called it the “White Castle.”
A place of beauty.
A place for weddings, for photo ops,
for pretending that horror
can be made elegant
if the curtains match the guilt.

But no paint can cover what happened there.

Blood doesn’t wash out with white linens.
And pain doesn’t forget
just because you renamed it history.

I’m not Black.
And I won’t pretend to carry that weight.
But I also won’t ignore it.

My people—the Guanches—were taken too.
Our language silenced.
Our land stolen.
Our names nearly erased.
So yes, I know colonization.
Yes, I know what it means to be disappeared.

But I also know this—
my skin walks this world easier.
Doors open for me.
Cops don’t flinch.
My grief doesn’t get questioned.

So let me be clear:

Even with the pain in my blood,
I carry privilege.
And I will not let it shield me
from the truth that this place,
this fire,
belongs to the voices who were shackled here.

Let that fucker burn
for every man forced to build it
brick by bloody brick.
For every woman raped behind those walls,
her cries stifled by southern drawls and Sunday prayers.
For every child sold like livestock
while the piano played in the parlor.

Let it burn for the tours that never said their names.
For the docents who called them "workers."
For the brides who posed in lace
on top of someone’s grave.

Let it burn
because we are done being polite
about places built on brutality.

Let the fire crackle like the whips.
Let it echo like the chains.
Let it speak louder than the silence
this country loves to keep
around anything that makes whiteness uncomfortable.

You mourn the mansion.
But not the museum.
You weep for the wood,
but not for the wounds.

You rage at burning property
but not at burning lives.

You weren’t angry
when Black history was boxed up,
when Native voices were pushed aside,
when LGBTQ kids were erased from curriculum
because their truth was too much.

But now—NOW—
you cry, because a plantation is gone?

Let that fucker burn.

This is not destruction.
It’s correction.

This is not rage.
It’s release.

This is not vengeance.
It’s truth catching fire
after too many years being buried alive.

No, it won’t be enough.
No fire could ever match the heat
of centuries stolen.

But this?
This is a spark.

A signal to the silenced.
A reckoning for the complicit.
A reminder to the privileged:
we are not waiting for your permission.

Let it burn
until the smoke rises so high
it chokes the myth of American innocence.

Let it burn
until the names they tried to erase
are carried on the wind,
screaming, We were here.
We still are.
We will not be quiet anymore.

Let the fire crackle like the whips.

Let it burn
until the ground splits open
and from the ash,
justice dares to grow.