Whitney Plantation

09/04/2026

September is , the perfect time to explore the deep, often overlooked connections between Latin America and the history of slavery.

The Whitney Plantation Gift Shop has curated reads that bring these stories to light:

📖 Black in Latin America — a sweeping look at the African diaspora across the region
📖 South to Freedom — the untold story of enslaved people who escaped south to Mexico, not north, in their fight for liberty
📖 Ritmos Afro Puertorriqueños / Afro-Puerto Rican Rhythms (Bilingual Edition) — celebrating Afro-Puerto Rican culture and heritage

Grab one (or all three) and deepen your understanding this month.

Shop now: https://loom.ly/rw1ga_w

09/02/2026

In a recent article for The Nation, journalist Mark Hertsgaard examines how Black communities in Salvador, Brazil, focus on history and music to confront systemic violence and state oppression.

Connecting the historical parallels between Salvador and New Orleans, Hertsgaard captures a vital truth:

"Memory, in other words, is a form of resistance."

This concept directly aligns with our mission at the Whitney Plantation. Preserving truth and centering the humanity of enslaved people is an ongoing act of resistance against historical erasure.

Get the full story in The Nation Magazine: https://loom.ly/rgG_l3E

As ICE violence resurges in the US, the musical history of black Brazil offers lessons in resistance.

09/01/2026

On this day, September 1, 1963, Plaquemine police stormed a mass meeting at Plymouth Rock Church with tear gas and cattle prods, sending mounted riders into the crowd and pursuing CORE national director James Farmer in a manhunt.

That summer, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) sent organizers to Plaquemine to launch voter registration drives after officials gerrymandered Black precincts out of city elections.

On August 19, Farmer led a downtown protest that ended in tear gas and arrests. He was released August 30 — the same day teenage marchers were attacked by police outside City Hall.

Two days later, organizers arranged a meeting at the Plymouth Rock Church, which congregants had renamed "Freedom Rock."

Local officers enlisted white citizens and state troopers who stormed the church on horseback, trampling, tasing and tear-gassing congregants. Farmer was smuggled out of town via hearse under threat of lynching.

When WWL in New Orleans interviewed Farmer the next day, he was asked, "Do you think there will be any more Negro demonstrations in Plaquemine, or do you think that the people were quelled by the alleged brutality of last night?"

Farmer replied, "Oh I don't think the Negros' demand for freedom can ever be quelled by brutality."

Follow for more in .

08/29/2026

Today we remember the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Ida in 2021, two storms that forever altered our communities and landscapes in South Louisiana.

Katrina took the lives of thousands in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast. The storm exacerbated deep injustices and inequities that persist today. Generations were swept away, many never to return.

Hurricane Ida made landfall 16 years later to the day and brought its own devastation, particularly in Texas and Louisiana. At Whitney Plantation, the storm took three historical buildings and caused over $1 million in damages. We were without power for a month and closed to the public for three.

Thanks to collective effort from our community and supporters, we were able to rebuild and continue our work to preserve this history.

Today we mourn the lives and ways of living lost. We honor the spirit of those who returned. And we express gratitude to this community of people who understand what it means to carry on.

08/28/2026

Rest in power, Emmett Till.

in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched while visiting family in Money, Mississippi. A Black teenager from Chicago, Emmett was spending the summer in the Jim Crow South, where one false accusation against a Black person often led to unimaginable violence.

Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world would see what had been done to her son. Photographs of Emmett’s body, published in Jet magazine, were a galvanizing force in the Civil Rights Movement.

In Mamie’s memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, she reminds us that an injustice anywhere should matter everywhere:

“When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, ‘That’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was.

The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of us.”

May Emmett Till’s memory continue to call us toward truth and the courage to confront injustice wherever it exists.

08/26/2026

BLACK WOMEN AND THE 19TH AMENDMENT 🗳️

in 1920, the 19th Amendment was certified, prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on the basis of s*x.

However, this ratification did not mean that all women gained equal access to the ballot. Black women had long been organizers, strategists, educators, and leaders in the fight for voting rights, but were pushed to the side by both white women and Black men.

Although the Seneca Falls Convention is often described as the birthplace of the women’s rights movement in the United States, its agenda centered largely on the concerns of white, middle- and upper-class women. Black women were excluded from many of these spaces and built their own organizations to advocate for racial and gender justice.

Through organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women and Ida B. Wells’ Alpha Suffrage Club, Black women organized their communities, challenged racist policies, and fought for political power.

Ida B. Wells captured the stakes of the fight for voting rights when she wrote:

“With no sacredness of the ballot there can be no sacredness of human life itself.”

Black women were essential in passing the 19th Amendment, yet Jim Crow laws continued to disenfranchise Black women. Voter suppression, particularly in the South, persists today.

Follow to learn more about the legacies of slavery.

📷: "Black women suffragists holding sign reading "Head-Quarters for Colored Women Voters," in Georgia" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1910 - 1920.

08/24/2026

At Whitney Plantation, we preserve the past to help people understand the present.

Here, you’ll learn about the West Africans who built this plantation, cleared the land, and maintained its success through their forced labor.

Our guided tours ensure that you’ll leave with a clearer understanding of our nation's history and the legacies of slavery that reverberate in the present day.

We invite you to visit and learn. Plan your visit today: https://whitneyplantation.org/plan-your-visit/



📸: Courtesy of Scott Black ()

08/23/2026

In honor of International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, Whitney Plantation will be closed on Sunday, August 23.

We will reopen with our regular hours on Monday, August 24.

This day commemorates the night in 1791 when enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) rose up against captivity. This uprising was a crucial turning point that helped drive the movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. First observed in Haiti in 1998 and Gorée Island, Senegal, in 1999, this international day invites collective reflection on the historical causes, methods, and enduring legacies of the slave trade.

As a site of memory dedicated to educating the public about the lives and labor of enslaved people, we honor this history and the resistance of those who fought for freedom. We invite you to use this day for reflection.

We look forward to welcoming visitors back to Whitney Plantation on August 24.

08/21/2026

Whitney Plantation will be closed on AUGUST 23 in observance of International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

The Haitian Revolution, a struggle for freedom, shattered the foundations of the plantation system that fueled France’s wealth.

Inspired by the French Revolution’s ideals of liberty and equality, enslaved people in Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti) rose up against their oppressors.

“Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. They knew that as long as these plantations stood their lot would be to labour on them until they dropped. The only thing was to destroy them.” – Historian CLR James

This uprising spread hope of liberation across colonies and ignited the fire for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

08/13/2026

Today is the day! ‘Ganking Mr. Guidry’ premieres TONIGHT at Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans.

A new play from playwright Harold Ellis Clark, 'Ganking Mr. Guidry' tells a story of five workers who band together to stand against injustice during the 1878 Louisiana sugarcane harvesting season.

Sponsored by the Whitney Plantation, this limited world premier only runs til Sunday. Get your tickets now: https://loom.ly/2DCRs-A.