A Journey Through Slavery at the Whitney Plantation-The 2017 David L., Sr. and Helen J. Temple Visiting Lecture Series in Africana Studies

Click Here for a review of Dr. Seck’s lecture that appeared in The Lafayette

Lecture: A Journey Through Slavery at the Whitney Plantation

When: Wednesday, September 20 at 12:00

Where: Hugel Science Center, Room 100

The Whitney Plantation is located in St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana, about an hour west of New Orleans on the Mississippi River. This former indigo then sugar plantation is now open to the public as a museum with a focus on slavery. At Whitney, the visitors are offered a unique perspective on the lives of Louisiana’s enslaved people through the use of restored historic buildings, museums 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 elsewhere in the US South. In his lecture, 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 and how those legacies contributed to shape American culture.

Ibrahima Seck is a member of the History department of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar (UCAD), Senegal. His research is mostly devoted to the historical and cultural links between West Africa and Louisiana with a special interest for religious beliefs, music, foodways, and miscellaneous aspects of folklore.