It felt like holy ground. When Jesus looked down on Jerusalem, he embraced the pain and the evil and the violence and he wept.

There was a hush that fell over our group as we walked the grounds of the Whitney Plantation – founded in 1752 by German immigrants. At its peak, there were 7,000 acres of indigo, sugar cane and soy beans planted, cultivated and harvested by 2,797 enslaved workers all told over the lifetime of business operation here.

The 2,000 acres remaining were dedicated in 2014 as the only plantation museum in Louisiana dedicated to an “exclusive focus on the real lives of enslaved people.”

A prominent New Orleans attorney purchased the property in the year 2000 as an investment. After the deed was transferred, he found some artifacts in some of the buildings he determined to be remnants of the slave era. His research intensified.

The discovery that finally captured his imagination was found in a log book of inventory. “The second most valuable property here next to the real estate was slaves,” he found. “One female slave was described as a good breeder. She was worth more than a woman who did not have many kids.”

That’s when the “light went on,” he told the Christian Science Monitor. “I had to find out more.”

So he did. He began to visit every African American church in the region here along the Mississippi River on the hunt for hard data. Not surprising, he found relatives who were descendants of those enslaved workers. He gathered their stories. His conviction grew. These stories must be told.

Our Civil Rights tour is based on the assumption that knowledge is power. Transformation happens when the truth is told. When folks experience a visceral moment of insight, history comes alive, minds are changed. Hearts open up.

So, today we walked the grounds and heard the stories of life on the plantation. We toured the housing. Heard about the long days in the field. The broken families. The harsh conditions. The whips and the chains. The attempts at escape; rebellions, too – all crushed with savage cruelty.

The labor of enslaved peoples laid the foundation stones of the American economy. We owe a debt of gratitude, but until now, we hadn’t really thought about that.

The good attorney, John Cummings, put $8.6 million of his own money into the project. The crowds came – from across the South and across America, young and old; elementary school children and retirees. They expect 100,000 visitors this year.

For us, the reverence, the silence; it felt like grief. The tragedy of injustice and exploitation - a blight on a long history that was mostly overlooked in my education. And today, the renewed awareness that too many of these old dynamics that separated the big white house from the shanty quarters of the enslaved persist to this very day.

We have travel mates (who are now becoming cherished friends) whose roots go back to that extraction of unwilling Africans who survived that impossible crossing of the Atlantic to the selling blocks in ports like New Orleans, sold like cattle, branded and held like livestock, collateral for loans and then lived under the whip of field managers, expected to meet quotas, bred like thoroughbred horses… and as some of our people sat in the quiet of the gardens in contemplation of their own ancestors. We let it all simmer for a while.

We can’t change the past. But we can own it. We can let it speak to us. We can allow it to shape our thoughts, inform our prayers, influence our sensitivities and enrich our soul.

There was a big brass bell under the shade of an old oak tree, loud enough to be heard across the acres of crops. It was used to wake up the workers in the early morning and an alert to trouble. Now, the bell is used to pay an audible tribute to all those who were enslaved.

Our guide invited us to pull the rope and sound the bell, if we would so choose.

Somehow, when I took my turn, it triggered a strong and deep emotion in me. Finally, there on the plantation, I could feel.

It took me by surprise.

Grief. Sadness. Remorse. Gratitude. And hope - that freedom might reign.

For good.