A Journey Through Slavery At The Whitney Plantation

The Whitney Plantation is a former indigo then sugar plantation located on the west 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. In his lecture, Dr. Seck will present the history of the Whitney Plantation in the wider context of the Atlantic slavetrade 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, hard labor and extreme violence. Beyond building the original foundations of the US economy, the enslaved Africans and their descendants contributed to shaping and defining American culture and identity.