For the enslaved people on Louisiana plantations, resistance took many subtle and perilous forms. The new Whitney Plantation exhibit “Amongst Ourselves: Resisting Slavery at Whitney Plantation” catalogs several: worship, maintaining blood or acquired kinship, education, sharing folktales and foodways, even cultivating herbal remedies.
Setting the narrative for the exhibit, the introductory panel asks: “Who taught them?” and “What did they learn?”
“I think we had a very unique opportunity here,” said Mary Niall Mitchell, history professor and director of the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans, which collaborated on the exhibit.
“I’ve brought teenagers through (to the Whitney Plantation) for various projects and things, and they’re often tempted to say, ‘If it were me, I would run away.’ And you want to break it down for them and explain what all of the conditions meant, how difficult that was to do, even though thousands and thousands of people would do it.”…