Jessica Smith

Review of Haven Underground

We went to slave haven while on a vacation to Nash...

We went to slave haven while on a vacation to Nashville. We drove 3.5 hours to Memphis just to see this place. Upon arrival there was a group (10-15 people) of Spanish speaking vacationers. They were very polite, one man even walked around and greeted every other person outside of their group with "Buenos Diaz" and a handshake. The sign says the museum opens at 10am... 10:20 rolls around and two workers finally show up. They let us in the museum around 10:25 and demand cash even though there's a sign saying they accept credit and debit cards on the outside of their building. We paid and they told us to walk through to bedrooms and down the hallway into a room of African instruments, as this is the self guided portion of the tour. There were two workers, a younger lady appearing to be in her 20's - early 30's and another lady who stated she was in her mid 40's. After I completed the self guided tour I waited in the hallway and observed the Spanish speaking group and the younger worker interact. One of the ladies in the group asked if she could bring a chair as she was elderly and could not stand for more than 20 minutes at a time. The worker was short with her, and upon the visitor asking again, because she didn't receive a clear answer the worker snapped at her, rolled her eyes, and said "I just said someone will bring you a chair." After everyone was checked in and completing the self guided portion the two workers went to the office to "speak" (yell) at each other. I was observing them through the doorway and when the younger worker saw me watching she stepped back out of my sight. When they finally started the tour the younger worker told everyone to huddle in the hallway in three rows, "short" people in the first row, "medium" people in the middle row, and "tall" people in the back. Well, when everyone couldn't huddle around a group of photos she wanted to talk about (because there were 20+ of us in a small hallway) she snapped yet again and told us all we needed to huddle around the pictures. A person from the Spanish speaking group informed her they had a translator, and asked if she could pause after a sentence so the translator could translate to the rest of the group. She responded with "No how this is going to work is I'm going to say three or four things then I'll pause". Once she realized we weren't all going to fit she said she was going to split our group in two (which was a great idea). She took the Spanish speaking group, and we got the older gal of the two. We started our tour and about two minutes in more people walked in... so she stopped and took their money and added them to the group... this happened at least three times. The rest of the tour was great until we were waiting in the kitchen for the other group to see the basement. During this time our tour guide went on a rant about modern day racism, and things that happened while Obama was running for president. Then ended her rant with "the more things change, the more things stay the same"... making it extremely awkward for the 10+ white people in the room trying to learn about history, making it seem like she was implying we were all racist. Overall, the tour was okay. The staff was rude, in general. And they had no patience for the diverse group that came to tour their facility. I wouldn't reccomend visiting slave haven, and I regret driving seven hours round trip specifically for it.