A Journey Through Slavery at the Whitney Plantation
Jun 22, 2021
Dr. Ibrahima Seck
A Journey Through Slavery at the Whitney Plantation
The Whitney Plantation was an indigo then a sugar plantation located on the right bank of the Mississippi River, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. The site is now open to the public as a museum with a total focus on slavery. At Whitney, the visitors are offered a unique perspective on the lives of Louisiana’s enslaved people using restored historic buildings, museum exhibits, memorial artwork and hundreds of first-person slave narratives. As a site of memory and consciousness, the Whitney Plantation Museum is meant to pay homage to all the people who were enslaved in Louisiana and everywhere else in the United States of America.
Dr. Seck will present the history of the Whitney Plantation in the wider context of the Atlantic slave trade and will touch many topics related to the cultural legacies of slavery in Louisiana. The history of slavery is not only a history of deportation and hard labor. Beyond building the original foundations of the US economy, the enslaved Africans and their descendants contributed to shaping and defining American culture and identity.
Dr. Seck is Director of Research at the Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum which is located in Wallace, Louisiana.