CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Seeking to support their city’s economy during the Great Depression, the women of Natchez, Mississippi, developed one of the first cultural tourism sites in the U.S., centered around the city’s antebellum architecture. In doing so, they created an image of the Old South as grand mansions and gracious living.
Paul Hardin Kapp, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign architecture professor specializing in historic preservation, wrote in his new book, “Heritage and Hoop Skirts: How Natchez Created the Old South,” about how the women transformed their city by marketing it to tourists, and the impact that had on the citizens of Natchez, their historic buildings and the idea of cultural heritage.
In the first three decades of the 20th century, a fascination with the country’s history reaffirmed Americans’ cultural Identity, Kapp wrote. It was heritage, not history, that was commodified, packaged as entertainment and sold to American families, he wrote. Kapp used Natchez as a case study to examine historic preservation and heritage-making, and how we attach meaning to places.
The women of the Natchez Garden Club created the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage of Antebellum Homes in 1932. The women originally sought to present the Spanish colonial history of the town. However, they found visitors were much more interested in its antebellum architecture and Southern culture, Kapp said. After a feud over which version of Natchez to present – a rift known as the “Big Split” or “The Battle of the Hoop Skirts” – the antebellum image of the city became the predominant brand, he said.
Because of the oppressive heat, the planters of antebellum Natchez built impressive villas close to town rather than living on their plantations. It was a short drive between the houses, making it easy for the collection of villas to become a tourist attraction when automobile travel and the family road trip were first gaining popularity, Kapp said.
While the women sought to improve Natchez, they also were acting out of necessity. “It was a desperate time and they needed money. It was Depression-era Mississippi. Families owned these houses that cost a fortune to keep up,” Kapp said.
The homeowners were surprised by the interest in the homes, most of which were decrepit. Visitors dressed in their finest clothes to tour them and be “received” by their hostesses, Kapp said.
The garden club women were aggressive and savvy marketers, he said. They were able to leverage New Deal programs, such as the WPA Writers’ Project, to promote their image of the city. As part of the pilgrimages, they presented staged performances that Kapp said included only a pinch of reality. They turned homes into restaurants, partnered on lines of home furnishings, sought to place Natchez into the storylines of novels being written about the South and lobbied filmmakers to model the buildings in the movie version of “Gone With the Wind” on Natchez homes, Kapp said.
The money raised by the pilgrimages allowed historic buildings in Natchez to be preserved.
“Natchez is a women’s story,” Kapp said. “The men in Natchez, Mississippi, didn’t think there was anything to all these old houses from the Civil War. They just completely discounted them. The women loved their town, loved their homes, loved their churches, and they devoted their energies into saving them. Other places lost a lot of that historic architecture. That was the vision of the women, to look at their historic buildings and see a future for them. That’s what makes Natchez distinct.”
However, the city’s graceful homes represent the lives of a small portion of antebellum residents, Kapp said. Some planters made a lot of money growing cotton in the early 19th century and built mansions such as those in Natchez, but most were poor and lived simply, he said.
The image of the city’s cultural heritage promoted by the women of Natchez also had a detrimental impact on its Black residents, he said. The tourism industry provided jobs, but the tableaus presented during the pilgrimages depicted Black participants as caricatures.
The story of Natchez’s cultural tourism is useful for questions today about our heritage, whether it’s a monument or a building name, he said.
“We say, ‘This is associated with these people and this time.’ Whether that is true, over the years it becomes accepted as true,” Kapp said. “Before we decide to remove or alter anything based on its meaning, I believe it’s important to understand how that meaning came about. The meanings and symbols of heritage die hard.”