Why The Burning Of The Nottoway Plantation Is Incredibly Spiritual

“Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it.” – Exodus 12:10. 

Before the phoenix can rise from the ashes, a fire has to leave those ashes behind. Throughout the African diaspora, fire rituals were used for this reason. 

Fire has always been a sacred element symbolizing the transformation between life and death. Here, “death” can be literal or a metaphor for change. 

Some African spiritualists believed that fire was a conduit bridging the physical and spiritual worlds, the smoke carrying messages to the ancestral realm. 

In many spiritually charged slave revolts, like the Haitian revolution, our enslaved ancestors used fire to ignite the spirit of liberation by burning hundreds of plantations to the ground. 

More recently, Black Americans everywhere have been celebrating Louisiana’s Nottoway Plantation going up in flames. 

While others argue over the architecture, we pour symbolic libations for the spirits of the ancestors, finally released from that house of horrors. 

Fire rituals remind us that the anti-Black systems we fight against can’t be reformed: they must be destroyed, and amidst the ashes the phoenix will rise. 

Black liberation is our “phoenix.” The fire in our hearts is the spirit of generations of Black resistance.