The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

The Clotilda’s group of Africans lived on the margins of Mobile life during the first half of the 1860s. After the war ended, however, and they found they could not get back across the ocean to Benin, the Africans founded their own colony, Africatown, in a clearing in the middle of a pine forest just north of Mobile. Cudjo Lewis was one of the surv

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Bras-Coupé was an African king enslaved in New Orleans. He was, according to the stories, striking and heroic. He danced in Congo Square, with many other enslaved people, on weekends. And everyone, from all points on the color line, admired his grace and beauty. But once he fled the plantation, his captivating movement and dignified posture were de

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There are some places that tell the ugly beauty overtly, not by innuendo or loud silence. Like the Whitney Plantation, also along the Great River Road, which has been restored as a way to tell the history of slavery. It retains all of its beauty and its horror. In 1811, the largest slave revolt in the US South took place there. About five hundred e

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When I was growing up, we went to New Orleans annually. I do not remember which visit it was when she took me to the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. But I remember her finger, slender with heavy knuckles, like mine have become, pointing at the plaque “Former Site of Holy Family Sisters Convent.” The unmentioned historic purpose of the ballroom was that it s

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