Ani DiFranco Apologies for Choosing Former Slave Plantation as Retreat Venue

Singer Ani DiFranco ended 2013 by joining the celebrity apology club.

The indie singer got scorched for staging a creative retreat at a locale with a deeply troubled past. The Nottoway Plantation and Resort in White Castle, LA once was home to a massive slave plantation, although today it serves the public as a museum.

The singer planned to appear at the location in June but quickly canceled after an outcry over the venue choice.

DiFranco apologized on her website, writing, “When I found out it was to be held at a resort on a former plantation, I thought to myself, ‘whoa,’ but I did not imagine or understand that the setting of a plantation would trigger such collective outrage or result in so much high velocity bitterness.”

I imagined instead that the setting would become a participant in the event,” she continued. “This was doubtless to be a gathering of progressive and engaged people, so I imagined a dialogue would emerge organically over the four days about the issue of where we were.

DiFranco’s venue choice proved problematic, in part, because the plantation isn’t as apologetic about its former life as one might expect, according to The Washington Post.

… the Nottoway Plantation’s Web site goes to pretty great lengths to romanticize its slave-keeping past — at one point characterizing its slaves as a “willing workforce” who were “well treated for the time.”