In November 2018, I took a day trip with my father and sister to a former slave plantation in North Carolina. A relative who lives nearby had picked up a brochure from the site and informed us that Black people who shared our last name had been enslaved there and that the site’s curators maintained genealogical records. Given that our great-grandfather had lived in that part of the state before migrating to western Massachusetts, where my father, and then his children, grew up, it seemed worth the trip to investigate potential connections to some of our people.

Before the journey we imagined ourselves ready for the experience, but the reality of standing on the soil where our direct ancestors were enslaved was much heavier than we were prepared for. It wasn’t merely contemplating our own connection to the site, but also witnessing other visitors’ vastly different relationships to it that made the experience so intense, and at times painful.

After our trip, my father stayed in contact with the site’s genealogist. Through their shared records, he was able to trace our family line back to a woman named Martha Hart. She was my great-great-great-grandmother, and part of the last generation of slaves held on the plantation we had visited.

Black folks have always been interested in our history, our families, and their unique legacies of resistance and survival. But as a new wave of young Black people attempts to learn more about its heritage, some of the only places available for us to look are sites of deep violence and trauma, like that plantation.

In the search for your own history, whether personal or communal, you may find yourself on the way to a similar historic site. Here are some things you may need to prepare for, and ways to structure the trip to mitigate harm.

Before you go, you should research the site.

If possible, find any information online or in writing about the site before you visit. See if it has a website or Yelp page. Pay close attention to the language used in these materials. Does the site appear to acknowledge the trauma of slavery, or gloss over it? Is the curation working to connect enslavement to the anti-Black violence of the present (like policing, deportation, and incarceration), or contain it in the past? This can at least help you brace yourself for some of the racism you may experience while visiting.

The group you go with should be a trusted crew.

Don’t go alone, for both your physical and emotional safety. Think carefully about close friends and family members that can accompany you, and include them in trip preparations, given that it may be an intense experience for everyone involved.

You can expect that the site will likely not be a place of mourning.

Before our trip, we knew little about the specific plantation we visited, only the information our relative had shared with us. When we arrived, we didn’t find solemn ground, but instead a home and grounds preserved as a government-designated “historic site” for tourists. The property was marketed as a slice of the past, a place for visitors to experience life in the Antebellum South. There was no space made for visitors to pay respects. The language used by tour guides and on the displays almost completely omitted words like “racism,” “white supremacy,” and “exploitation,” and in its futile attempts to honor the enslaved, credited them for their “hard work” and “skilled craftsmanship.”

Be prepared to enter a site that makes no space for mourning, and papers over atrocities with benign language.

You may not be welcome there.