Event Calendar

EVENT DETAILS:

"Through Darkness to Light" - Photographs Along the Underground Railroad

Event Date: April 6th, 2019

West Baton Rouge Museum 845 N. Jefferson Avenue Port Allen, La 70767 (225) 336-2422 April 6 - May 26, 2019 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales spent more than a decade meticulously researching “fugitive” slaves and the ways they escaped to freedom. The path Michna-Bales documented encompasses roughly 2,000 miles of actual sites, cities, and places that freedom-seekers passed. In this series of photographs, she helps us imagine the long road to freedom as seen through the eyes of those who made the epic journey. An estimated 100,000 enslaved people between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865 chose to embark on this journey to freedom. Many consider the Underground Railroad to be the first great freedom movement in the Americas and the first time when people of different races and faiths worked together in harmony for freedom and justice. Some consider the Underground Railroad the first civil rights movement within America. Louisiana freedom stories will be included in this exhibit, including an original reward letter from 1817 for a man who escaped from Pointe Coupee Parish.