Spencer Goldade

Review of Nashville Zoo

This is a gorgeous, really well designed zoo. We s...

This is a gorgeous, really well designed zoo. We strongly recommend it if you have kids or care about the welfare of animals in captivity.

Where we had trouble was with some of the narrative surrounding its history and how it was presented.

It's no secret that the zoo moved to this location after a historic family sold it. You can see plaques all over one area talking about how slaves were "needed," for the original farm to run. A few years ago, in 2014, many of the slaves graves had to be relocated. You would think this would be a good opportunity to show these people more respect, but instead they received regular stones as grave markers instead of any identifying or anything more presentable. Meanwhile, the "masters" still have an elaborate graveyard, filled with obelisks and nicely carved markers.

Why not something to honour these nameless slaves who built and ran this farm? And why not a more suitable narrative surrounding them, the family that owned the land, and the farm's history? It felt as though the narrative here was okay with and sympathized with these slave owners.

We were glad that the historic home estate was the last part of the zoo we saw, because the rest was absolutely lovely and still very much recommended.