Runnin’ and Runnin’ in Louisiana: The Underground Railroad
First-person accounts of enslaved people who sought freedom enliven this exploration of the Underground Railroad in Louisiana.
Learn about the Underground Railroad from primary sources in this interactive presentation. Excerpts from runaway slave ads, oral histories of formerly enslaved people, photographs, and more illustrate the stakes, challenges, and triumphs of freedom seekers.
Learn more in this presentation created by Kerri Sullivan-Leger, HNOC Derven Scholar and graduate student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Related Stories
Threads of Motherhood
The clever construction of a maternity dress offers an intimate glimpse into 19th-century motherhood.
The Thanksgiving Sermon That Rallied the Secessionist Movement
Rev. Benjamin Palmer gained national fame—he went viral, in an 1860 sense—just as Southern states were deciding how to respond to Lincoln’s election.
Related Collection Highlights
Cane River Collection
Over 1,400 legal and financial documents amount to a detailed record of one slice of 19th-century Black Creole life.
Elmwood Plantation Menu
This stylish menu from a restaurant in a former plantation home belies the site’s dark history of human enslavement.
“The Scourged Back”
HNOC acquired an original copy of the infamous image that took Civil War-era America by storm, quickly becoming a tool of the abolitionist cause.
Related Virtual Exhibitions
Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808–1865
A groundbreaking examination of America's perpetuation of the slave trade and New Orleans’s role as a hub of slave trading.
Related Books
Related News
In NOLA.com Guest Column, HNOC Historian Discusses “Captive State” As Public History Project
WGNO: Born a Slave, Sold Six Times. Meet New Orleans's First Coffee Barista
“Captive State” Book: Upcoming Local and Regional Literary Events
Subscribe to Our Education Newsletter