Jeff Darren Muse

Stolen Labor

Featured in Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope

“We Brothers of This House” offers a behind-the-scenes look at my work as a historical interpreter and volunteer coordinator at McLeod Plantation Historic Site. Lasting several years, this professional experience in Charleston, South Carolina, meanders throughout Dear Park Ranger, establishing a present tense for the book while offering critical reflections for personal growth. An excerpt:

“Five days a week, wearing khaki pants and a dark blue uniform shirt, I climb the stairs inside the McLeod House, the center of a former cotton plantation that enslaved up to one hundred African Americans at the outbreak of the Civil War. Built in 1854, it’s essentially a three-story lookout, situated on high ground and designed to surveil a forced labor camp. The house has thirty-three windows, eight fireplaces, echoey twelve-foot ceilings, and rich, reddish planks of longleaf pine flooring, old growth, tightly grained. Without question, enslaved craftsmen helped build it, as with most of antebellum Charleston. I marvel at their expertise, not to mention their stolen labor.”

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