“A journey through slavery at the Whitney Plantation” by Ibrahima Seck, University of Dakar
4-5 p.m. Sept. 19, Department of History Faculty Lounge, 3702 Posvar Hall

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. 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. In his lecture, Seck will present the history of the Whitney Plantation in the wider context of the Atlantic slave trade and will touch on many topics related to the cultural legacies of slavery in Louisiana.

This is the opening lecture of 2023-24 speaker series on “Slavery and Memorialization in the Atlantic World,” organized by Keila Grinberg, Alaina Roberts and Pernille Røge. For more information, contact per20@pitt.edu.