One of the biggest U.S. slave markets finally reckons with its past

Natchez was the largest slave-trading market in Mississippi before the Civil War, and one of the largest in the country. Today, the city is full of the former homes of plantation owners and their slave quarters, though for many years, these sites didn’t acknowledge their Black history publicly.

One of those former slave quarters sits on an estate that housed 124 enslaved people in 1844. In 2014, Debbie Cosey, now 66, and her husband, Gregory, now 72, bought the building. It was in significant disrepair, with dirt floors and plants growing out of the walls. Over two-and-a-half years, the couple renovated it, converting it into a bed-and-breakfast called Concord Quarters. Now they live on the first floor, and the second floor accommodates six guests.