Skip to content
The Historic New Orleans Collection
Visit
Calendar

Runnin’ and Runnin’ in Louisiana: The Underground Railroad

October 15, 2024

First-person accounts of enslaved people who sought freedom enliven this exploration of the Underground Railroad in Louisiana.

A black and white illustration depicts a group of African-American individuals walking with determination. A prominent figure in the foreground, wearing a headscarf and long dress, points forward, leading the group. The artwork is dynamic and expressive.

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.

View View
A blurred background with a close-up of a metal chain in focus. Overlaid text reads: Runnin and Runnin in Louisiana and The Underground Railroad by Kerri Sullivan Leger.
About

Derven Scholars

Paid internships for college students interested in museum education

View View
A Derven Scholar intern works at a desk at the Historic New Orleans Collection.

Related Stories

View More
First Draft

Sally Miller or Salomé Müller?

An enslaved woman named Sally Miller went to the Louisiana Supreme Court to sue for her freedom. She won, then she was forgotten.

View View
First Draft

Possessed by the Past at Shadows-on-the-Teche

An antique armoire gives insight into a New Iberia plantation's complicated history and road to preservation.

View View

Related Collection Highlights

View More
Portrait of a woman with dark hair, wearing a black dress with a white collar. She is seated, holding a small object in her left hand, against a plain background. Her expression is calm and composed.

Cane River Collection

Over 1,400 legal and financial documents amount to a detailed record of one slice of 19th-century Black Creole life.

Learn More
2025 0084 2 001 O10 2026 02 20 173610 pddd

“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.

Learn More
Detail of the back cover from the Elmwood Plantation menu, showing an illustration featuring the columns of the building.

Elmwood Plantation Menu

This stylish menu from a restaurant in a former plantation home belies the site’s dark history of human enslavement.

Learn More

Related Virtual Exhibitions

View More
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.

View View
A historical illustration depicting an auction scene with an auctioneer holding a gavel and several men in 19th-century clothing. A Black man and a Black woman stand on the auction block. Various fabrics are visible in the foreground.

Related Books

View More
A book cover featuring a portrait of a man with dark hair in 19th-century attire, set against a muted background. The title Vaudechamp in New Orleans is at the top, and William Keyse Rudolph is at the bottom.

Vaudechamp in New Orleans

by William Keyse Rudolph

Learn More Buy Now Buy Now
Cover of a book titled George L. Viavant: Artist of the Hunt by George E. Jordan. The cover features an illustration of a duck hanging upside down against a green and white background.

George L. Viavant: Artist of the Hunt

by George E. Jordan

Learn More Buy Now Buy Now
Cover of Nelly Custis Lewis’s Housekeeping Book edited by Patricia Brady Schmit. Features a silhouette cameo and cursive writing in the background.

Nelly Custis Lewis’s Housekeeping Book

edited by Patricia Brady Schmit

Learn More

Related News

View More
A tour guide gestures towards an exhibition display at HNOC.
Announcement

“Captive State” Book: Upcoming Local and Regional Literary Events

September 17, 2025
Explore opportunities to learn more about HNOC’s latest publication at upcoming community events.
Read More
A screenshot from the video “Does Mass Incarceration Make Us Safer?” shows a woman adding a post-it note to a wall of post-it notes that answer the prompt "If you could change Louisiana's incarceration system, where would you begin?"
Behind the Scenes

New Video Goes Behind the Scenes of “Captive State” Exhibition and Companion Book 

October 9, 2025
Narrated by Anthony J. Hingle Jr., the piece explores how the project draws irrefutable historical links between slavery and mass incarceration.
Read More
Carceral City book cover
Press Release

HNOC, LHA Select “The Carceral City” to Receive 2024 Williams Prize

March 19, 2025
With powerful and evocative prose, author John K. Bardes boldly reinterprets relations between slavery and prison development in American history.
Read More

Subscribe to Our Education Newsletter

20100429 Student Workshop MC016 adj web