KINGSPORT — For the first time, the Rotherwood Mansion will be hosting a reunion for descendants of both slave owners who owned the property in the 1800s, and slaves who lived and were forced to work on it.
The reunion will be at 2 p.m., Sept. 21 at the Rotherwood Mansion. It is not open to the public, and about 125 people are attending, Rotherwood descendant Tacia Green said.
“We already moved on, but have we truly moved on?” Green said. “We can’t forget our past but we don’t always have to live in our past.”
Rotherwood was a plantation and its main house is Rotherwood Mansion, descendant Calvin Sneed stated in an email. It was built by Frederick A. Ross and was later passed to Joshua Phipps who was cruel to those enslaved to him.
Green said she hoped the event would bring peace and healing between the families.
Green found the Rotherwood Mansion Kingsport TN Facebook page. She contacted the current owner Lanita Thibault, who said she would be happy if Green organized an event at the property.
“So I put it out there,” Green said. “And, surprisingly, everybody was coming on board excited.”
She said the event would not necessarily bring closure, as that part of American history can never be closed, but the reunion could bring peace to the families.
“I hope that the young people that are there to learn, not only the descendants of the enslaved, but the descendants of the owner, that our young people can see the harmony that we’re trying to portray, that none of us was actually there,” Green said. “And yes, we were done wrong as the enslaved, but in 2024 we can’t blame anyone that’s actually living. And let’s give anyone the opportunity to own up. ‘Hey, my family did wrong, can we make amends?’”
Green said she hopes people take away “peace, love and history, love for each other and love for the true history.”
