The sign on the gate reads “No Trespassing.” The historic marker on the side of the road informs passersby that this is the Levi Jordan Plantation — “Home built 1848–1851 by slave labor; Materials came by sea, Florida to Velasco, and up the San Bernard River.” Beyond the padlocked gate is a hulk of a house that could inspire a Dickens novel — its windows and doors boarded and locked — shutting out everything but decay. The green Columbia bottomland stretches beyond.

But while you listen to your footsteps past the house and the well and explore its fields and woods, you are walking with history. Not the major event kind of history that can be bounded by a single day, but of history changing for an entire people. Read More