“Truth is like fire”: an interview with Ibrahima Seck

Dr. Ibrahima Seck has been the Director of Research at Whitney Plantation since 2000, the first museum dedicated to slavery in the United States. He is also a professor of history at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. In this interview, Dr. Seck discusses the challenges of opening and running a museum dedicated to slavery in the southern United States, how US-based museums of slavery can benefit from collaborations with African institutions, the role of art in interpreting the history of slavery, and how Whitney Plantation's structure and approach have evolved over time.

Ian Beamish interviewed Dr. Seck at Whitney Plantation on 19 November 2023. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Ian Beamish:

At Whitney Plantation, you emphasize the role of Africa and Africans in Louisiana much more than most plantation sites do. How does that allow you to tell a fuller history?

Ibrahima Seck:

I think slavery played a very important role here in building the economy and shaping of the culture. I think it is normal for any museum here along the river to focus on slavery, so that’s what we did from the very beginning.

 

When I joined the team in 2000, it was very clear that this museum would be a museum of slavery. At that time, most of these museums did not say anything about slavery, with the exception maybe of Laura Plantation and the River Road African American Museum that was initially located on Tezcuco Plantation.¹

Ian Beamish:

How do you think emphasizing the role of Africa distinguishes you from other plantations that focus more just on the United States or Louisiana and slavery here?

Ibrahima Seck:

I think it is important when you study slavery, be it in a classroom or implementing the history of slavery at a museum, that you have to also focus on Africa, and enslavement in Africa. Start from Gorée Island or from Ouidah in Benin or Elmina in Ghana. We also have to check the backgrounds of those people. They came here on slave ships, maybe naked or half naked, but they have their own background, and nobody needs a suitcase to carry his or her culture.

 

That is how we understand the contribution of Africans to the making of the culture. And even in building the economy, they brought some material culture that proved to be very useful.

 

I can give you one example. Those who were deported here and enslaved, they solved the problem of rice cultivation. If you check the history of rice cultivation, you’ll see that they came from countries where rice was cultivated since 4,000 B.C. I think it is important to know the history of Africa to really understand Africans in the Western Hemisphere.

Ian Beamish:

At Whitney, you use art extensively to interpret the history of slavery. Can you talk about why you feel this is an effective complement to more traditional museum approaches?

Ibrahima Seck:

Absolutely. Art is really important. There is something you can quickly express through art. It may be through sculptures or even through songs. It is a very convenient pedagogical tool to convey a message. Maybe the most expressive kind of art we have here are the children of Whitney. Those statues of children represent the people who were interviewed in the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project.²

 

We use those first-hand testimonies to tell the story of slavery, and we decided to represent those people as children to match those childhood memories. When people see those children, that’s a kind of communication, a strategy of communication that really, really, really works. If you go also to that memorial dedicated to children who died in slavery, and you see that statue, built by Rod Moorhead of Mississippi, an angel with African and female figure taking a dead baby to heaven, it is really touching.³

 

I think raw art is really, really important, and I think our memorials are really attractive. I mean, people really feel [emotions] thanks to the art you find at each of those memorials.

Ian Beamish:

The statues that you mentioned by Woodrow Nash are widely used in images of Whitney and articles about Whitney. In all of them, Woodrow Nash leaves their eyes absent. What is the purpose of that choice?

Ibrahima Seck:

I think technically it is understandable and many people take photos of the children. Although they don’t have eyes, it looks like there’s something shining in there and it is really captivating. I never talked to Woodrow Nash about not putting eyes in those, why they didn’t have eyes. But I understand that the reflection through those empty eyes is really captivating.

Ian Beamish:

Over the years since Whitney has opened to the public, you’ve gone through a series of stages of how you run your tours from having tour guides from the parish to having a broader selection of guides to now using audio tours.⁴ What were the decisions behind the shifts that you made in how people move through the site?

Ibrahima Seck:

When you start something and you keep doing it, you accumulate some experience. So, for instance, from the very beginning, almost all our tour guides were people from the River Road, especially from Edgard, from Wallace, from Vacherie. Then we got many people interested, although they are not from this area, but from New Orleans or Baton Rouge.

 

They come and they say, “We want to be part of it.” If you have some people who come like that and say, “Please let me in,” you just open the door. I know at least two tour guides like this. One of them is Susan, she’s based in New Orleans. She came to visit the plantation, and she was on my tour and she said that’s the day she decided to be part of it, and she came back and applied and she was hired to be a tour guide. She’s still here.

 

I know also maybe two of the people who got involved did so by just getting on a tour and then saying, “I want to be part of it.” And we shifted approaches when we decided to also have an audio tour in 2019. There was no COVID yet. And we’re glad we did it, because right after we finished, COVID started, lockdown, and when we opened back up, we started doing those self-guided tours.

 

The self-guided tours have an advantage. The person chooses the language he or she wants, and then you go at your own pace and absorb as much as you can. But I think the majority of the people prefer guided tours.

 

We have people who have come here and went on guided tours, and when they came back and found out about these self-guided tours, some people talk to me and say they prefer to guided tours, but the self-guided tours are really excellent.

Ian Beamish:

For a long time, this site was privately owned by the founder John Cummings, and you’ve fairly recently switched to a non-profit status via the Whitney Foundation. Has that changed anything about the museum operations?

Ibrahima Seck:

We shifted to non-profit in December 2019. So after being around for almost 20 years, John Cummings decided to retire from running the museum, and of course it did affect us. He invested millions of dollars in implementing the museum, but it was also important to shift to a non-profit.

 

John Cummings is not meant to be here forever, and although he did donate to the museum to the Whitney Institute, a non-profit organization, he’s still around. And whenever we have big problems and are in dire in need of money, he’s still around and helps. With COVID, the situation was really complicated, but all the personnel were retained and nobody lost his or her salary throughout the lockdown.

 

The other big challenge we had in the past was Hurricane Ida. There was a lot of damage on the church, the big house, the slave cabins, and we did get some grants for repairs, but John Cummings also came around and really helped us get back on our feet and that’s really important.

Ian Beamish:

Thank you. I have a few questions about your thoughts more generally on the history of slavery at plantation sites and museums. Whitney has been widely written about and talked about as the first museum dedicated entirely to slavery in the US, and I know, personally, I’ve heard a lot of people at museums talking about trying to change their interpretation and using Whitney as a potential model of that. Many of these people cite Whitney as an example of how to represent the history of slavery at a plantation site ethically and do it in an educational manner. How do you feel about Whitney being an example for other sites to look to?

Ibrahima Seck:

I feel a lot of, I wouldn’t say pride, but a lot of satisfaction to see the example of Whitney being reproduced elsewhere. I’ve been to museums before I ever visited Whitney. I mentioned Tezcuco Plantation where the River Road African American Museum was and started by Kathe Hambrick. I mentioned also Laura Plantation, although they focus more on the big house and the family, but they had some slavery over there.

 

So, Whitney is indeed the first museum of slavery totally focused on slavery. And I think our narrative became some kind of paradigm, some kind of example to be followed. When we opened, there were many, many plantation museum owners who came here and who sent people to see what finally was considered as the best practice in museums, museums of slavery, not only in Louisiana, but also almost everywhere in the United States. So, we have the example of Montpelier and Monticello.⁵

 

So everywhere, people have changed the narrative and are doing much work in order to implement slavery on those, to present slavery on those sites. Not only in the narrative, but also digging the soil to learn about slavery through archeology. I remember one time I was in a Cajun restaurant near Laura Plantation, B&C Seafood. I met a lady, she was running a plantation museum, which is closed now. I won’t mention the name of it.

 

But when she came in, she talked to me and said, “Dr. Seck, you have taken all our customers.” I said, “I’m sorry, we did not mean to take your customers, but maybe there’s something you need to do about your narratives.” And maybe a few weeks later, the owner of the plantation – it is a big chemical company – they sent a delegation here to meet me. I took them on a two-hour tour, and then we had meetings at that plantation museum.

 

I found out that they had even reproduced the children of Whitney over there. But finally they closed. I don’t know why. I’m really glad to see that what we did here was approved by people and people like it. And I hope that will continue.

Ian Beamish:

What advice would you have for museum curators and directors and so on trying to reshape the interpretation at plantation sites that have long had either white supremacist interpretations or other historical interpretations that have erased the history of slavery?

Ibrahima Seck:

We have a saying in Senegal, in Wolof, that truth is like fire. You may choose to sit on it, but not forever. A place like Louisiana, and all over the United States, slavery is so well documented and especially here, it is so well documented, it’s easy to build a narrative just based on whatever you say on solid documentation. It may be archives and things like that, newspapers of the time.

 

I remember reading Gumbo Ya-Ya again, by Lyle Saxon, and for the first time I fell upon information from a newspaper from New Orleans advertising a lottery where people go and buy tickets, and what is the prize? (Saxon et al., 1945) An enslaved woman, and you find that all over the newspapers. Also, this country has something that no other country in the world has – oral histories – interviews with people who were formerly enslaved.

 

The Federal Writers Project did a good job. Maybe they had very biased questions.⁶ In the end we still have 2600 first-hand testimonies about slavery. No country had that kind of information available. So, as far as the United States is concerned, they have really something, all they need to build a narrative and just tell the things like they were. It is so easy, but we have to make something clear, that every museum should have that kind of strategy of communication.

 

That’s what I tell the people here all the time. We did not build this museum just to show the horrors of slavery. We do not just build it for you to come here, pay for a ticket and hear how bad slavery was and things like that. What I always tell them is that the message has to be clear. This museum was implemented to make some change, and how can we make some changes to tell the story of slavery as it was?

 

Also, let people know that now we have learned something about slavery, become a missionary. When you go home or into your community, please check the curriculum and see what is being taught to your children, to your grandchildren. Because this country has a big problem if the legacies of slavery, they’re still around here, and Black people are still suffering from the legacies of slavery.

 

White supremacists were not born racists. They have become racist because of the kind of education they get from their entourage. So, what is important here is maybe you can get a lot of emotion when you get on the tour on the Whitney Plantation, but hopefully we expect that emotion will take to action, and we encourage people also to do something about it.

Ian Beamish:

You’ve done a lot of work with sites in Senegal and West Africa as well as Louisiana. How do you think that sites dedicated to the history of slavery in the United States can do a better job working with sites dedicated to the history of slavery in Africa?

Ibrahima Seck:

That’s really important because slavery was mostly studied from the dungeons and castles along the coast of Africa, Middle Passage. But we need a true cooperation between museums in Africa and museums in the Western Hemisphere to have a complete picture of slavery. Now, we are doing a lot of studies in Africa to study what happened before Gorée Island, before those slave ports, [to understand] how African elites were involved into the business of slavery.

 

All that is really important, and we in Africa, we don’t know the diaspora that much. We may know Michael Jackson, we may know Muhammad Ali, but there are so many things we need to know about what happened to our ancestors in this country. Personally, I have started lecturing in Africa, but whenever I tell them something about Africans in Louisiana, they’re just astonished.

 

They say, “Wow, is that the way it was?” I say, yes. Really in Africa, we don’t even think about the agency of our people once they were deported and enslaved here. We just think about the horror of deportation, people being whipped, walking to the pace of the whip and things like that. We need to learn about the resilience of our people, how they survived, they resisted, built the economy, also contributed tremendously to the building of the culture.

 

African Americans also need to understand that. I mean, all Americans need to understand that. This is not just a matter of Black or white. We need, whatever the shade of our color, to understand the history of slavery in Africa and its background and also after deportation here in the Western Hemisphere.

 

Everybody needs to understand, because this is truly a story of glory. That’s my conclusion, the conclusion of a book I just finished writing.⁷ Indeed, this is a true story of glory. It is just amazing how these people were able to show that much resiliency and that much agency to do what they did for this country. We need to know about that. Everybody needs to learn about it.

 

So the cooperation between African and American museums should allow us to provide a complete picture of slavery and also have some kind of exchanges. Eloi Coly [curator of the Maison des Ésclaves on Gorée Island in Senegal] was here for a week – I brought him to your university [the University of Louisiana at Lafayette]. He worked right over here at Whitney Plantation, and then I took him to the African American Museum in St. Martinville.

 

In fact, the cooperation between St. Martinville and Gorée Island began in 2000, and the two museums—one on Gorée Island that they call the House of Slavery [Maison des Ésclaves], and the African American Museum in St. Martinville—played a very important role for that cooperation between the two twin cities. We need to have more of that and hopefully in the future, Whitney Plantation also will have some kind of cooperation with all the slave ports along the west coast of Africa that contributed to the making of the enslaved population here in Louisiana.

Ian Beamish:

How do you think the specific location of these plantation sites, for example, the Whitney being in Louisiana on the Mississippi River near New Orleans, shape house sites that interpret the history of slavery? Do you think things would be different, for example, in another part of the US, like Virginia or at Gorée Island, or do you think the same approaches to interpreting this history work across time and place?

Ibrahima Seck:

I think the only difference in the interpretation may be the difference in the economics of slavery. Other than that, I think they’re the same institutions. The slave codes are not very different between parts of the country. There may be some differences dictated by the experience of the different powers like the French, the British, the Spanish, but basically, slave control is the same with the same goals.

 

So I think if we have some difference in the interpretation of slavery, it would be only dictated by geography and economics. Wherever slavery existed, [it] had the same goals – people were enslaved to be put to work and produce some wealth and comfort for the masters.

 

In the so-called Lands of Islam, the Middle East, you may find some Black people who were enslaved and who went through a tremendous promotion in the military, maybe in the administration of the empires. For the vast majority of people who were enslaved all over those so-called Lands of Islam from Moorish Spain all the way to the Middle East and toward India, slavery was the same.

 

The number one goal is economics, building wealth, and come forth for the masters. When you study the history of sugar, you find out that most of the sugar that was consumed in the world came from the Middle East. After the Muslims conquered parts of India, they took some cane back to the Middle East, and all the sugar that was consumed in Europe came from that area, that’s why it was so expensive. So, definitely the difference would be only dictated by geography and economics.

Ian Beamish:

The final set of questions I have are centered on your more general approach to teaching about slavery. In addition to your role as director of research here at Whitney, you are also a professor at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, so you have experience from an academic side as well as the museum side. You have said in the past that you would like the history of slavery to be taught as the history of civilization. Can you tell us what you mean by that and how that approach would help people do a better job teaching about slavery?

Ibrahima Seck:

First of all, I have to say that before you get to any teaching of slavery, people should start studying the history of Africa from the beginnings, which is the history of all mankind. We have to start with that background, that’s really important. To let people know that there is one human race, that human race came out of Africa, and it was racism who took us in the way of putting the name of race, the concept of race on phenotypes.

 

There is one human race born in Africa, and then people migrated to different geographical environments and the phenotypes change. We have to understand that the history of Africa, especially the ancient history of Africa, is the history of all mankind, and then people went into different experiences. But Africa is not only the origin of mankind, it is the origin of religion because religion is meant for human beings, not animals.

 

The origin of food production, animal husbandry, agriculture, also the origin of science, it is already studied, despite some people who are still in denial. So, Africa is just the origin of civilization and the people who came here have a long background in terms of history, culture and things like that. All that I think is really important to study.

 

If I take just one example related to Louisiana, how the Africans who were brought over here, the first slave ships … carried many rice growers and barrels of rice that saved this colony of Louisiana from starvation, that really those people help build a sustainable food crop that saved the colony. So, those people did learn to do that for thousands of years before being deported. Human beings only domesticated two kinds of rice, two species of rice, one in Asia, Oryza sativa, and one in West Africa in Mali along the Niger River, Oryza glaberrima.

 

Another example is about the very first cowboys ever here in Louisiana. Most of them clustered in southwest Louisiana in the regional prairie, in ranches along the Bayou Teche. All that is well documented and many of those people were described here in Louisiana as nègres de nation Poulard, “Negroes of the Poulard Nation.” And it is clear that those people were Fulbe or Fulani people with specialties of cattle raising in Africa.

 

If we look at Louisiana, I mean greater Louisiana, the Mississippi River, this is where the blues started, jazz, Zydeco, rock and roll. I think musicologists still have a big job to do studying the real roots of all those musics. Those who wrote about the music just say blues is from Mali, because they knew people like Ali Farka Touré. It is not that simple. We have to study that in what I call longue durée, a long set of time.

 

Everybody likes what Africans and their descendants contributed to building that America, which is the culture. I was invited years ago when people were discussing about should we dismantle the statues of the Southern generals who wanted to maintain Black people in pivotal slavery, or should we leave them, because it is our history? That was the debate here in Louisiana.

 

At that time, the statues was still standing. And I was invited to lecture at the public library in Gonzales, and my audience was composed of a majority of Southern ladies of a certain age. As soon as I opened my mouth to talk about the statues of the generals of the South, they all started to shout, “No, we cannot … No, it is our history. You have to maintain those statues.”

 

I said, “It’s your right to claim those statues, but I think it would be better for you, for this whole country to celebrate what you have in common, especially in Louisiana.” And they asked me, “What should we celebrate and what we have in common to celebrate?” I said, “Celebrate the culture You have a wonderful culture, and everybody contributed to the making of that culture.”

 

I’m not claiming that it’s only Africans. No, it’s not possible. You have the French around here, you have the Germans, you have the Cajuns, who came later, although being of French origin. You have the Native Americans. You have all the immigrants who came maybe on the second part of the nineteenth-century, people from Ireland, people from Italy, people from everywhere. Even in the nineteenth-century, Chinese people came around here. So, it’s such a wonderful culture and I hope that people would be able to implement that kind of approach to teaching the history of slavery.

Ian Beamish:

As a final question, how do you see the history of slavery in general and the history as told at the Whitney, specifically, as connected to the present? How do you look to shape people’s thinking about the present at Whitney?

Ibrahima Seck:

The link is very simple. We just invite people to look around and to see by themselves and be reminded that the legacies of slavery are still here, and also let them understand this museum was built to understand these legacies of slavery. Black people were taken through on additional hundred years of slavery by another name, Jim Crow.

 

People died trying to vote and they started mass incarceration. And for Louisiana, we have a very good example here, the Angola prison, the poverty, the majority of the Black people are maintained in a state of dire poverty by schools, and all the violence that go with it, the drugs. Today, we see Black people being shot, killed in the streets of America just like animals.

 

I think America deserves better and to fix these problems. So, that’s how we link past and present here. And when you link past and present, that’s when we invite people to become missionaries and do something about the legacies of slavery, and that’s how you can build a greater America. I think you have everything, all the commodities.

 

What is missing here is equal rights and justice, especially for Black people, equal rights and justice, that’s all that they needed from the very beginning. They came out of slavery with so many skills, they just needed to be left alone, have equal rights and justice. And they would provide for themselves just as they did when they were enslaved to build the foundation of the economy of this country. They just needed to be left alone.

 

Some white supremacists would never accept them. You can even keep your ballot, white supremacists. But when I build my business, don’t destroy it. I think the best example we have here is the destroying of what they call the Black Wall Street in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 

It is said more than 300 talented people, most of them talented entrepreneurs, were killed overnight and their businesses and houses burned to the ground. I think it is for those legacies, this is a matter of civil rights, equal rights and justice. That’s how we link us to the present.

 

Ian Beamish: Is there anything we didn’t cover that you think the museum professionals potentially reading this should know from your experience at Whitney?

Ibrahima Seck:

This museum is doing very well. We have students coming here, people coming from all around the world. And I would like this museum to be also a place for performers to perform the culture and be also a link to connect people. I would love to see this museum be in the middle of building study abroad programs in West Africa, Central Africa, wherever the people came from.

 

There’s a lot we can do here. Not just a place where people come and learn about slavery, but also a place that can reconnect people. We have a lot of space here and I would like to organize an annual festival just like they do in Greenville, Mississippi, on a cotton field every late September. And we know that music especially is a very important tool for connecting people or reconnecting people. I think the festival initiated in the 1950s [and] helps get Black people, white people, every people together. I think the blues and rock and roll played a very important role in that.

 

Beyond all of that, we need to connect people. I wouldn’t say reconnecting people, I’m talking about African Americans being reconnected with their roots. That’s really important, as is allowing everybody to get the opportunity to be connected with Africa. As a professor and a teacher involved in study abroad programs in Senegal, I have seen people transformed, Black and white students, transformed.

 

Going to Africa, learning the language, and many of them come back to America speaking French and Wolof at least, because the experience allows them to have another perspective or worldview, especially toward Africans in Africa. So, we should have a Marshall Plan for that. Some kind of Marshall Plan. Just like the success of the Peace Corps, we should have a big program. And of course maybe we have a Fulbright program here, but we need to have something that we take many, many, many students to study abroad and especially in Africa. Bon, voila, merci.

Ian Beamish:

Thank you so much.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Beamish

Ian Beamish is a assistant professor of Public History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Notes

1 Laura Plantation and the River Road African American Museum were both located within a few kilometers of Whitney Plantation at plantation sites. Laura remains there but the River Road African American Museum has since moved into a building in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, about 40 kilometers from Whitney, also near the Mississippi River.

2 Artist Woodrow Nash made dozens of sculptures representing the formerly enslaved people interview by the Federal Writer’s Project as children, showing them at the age they would have been under slavery.

3 This references “The Field of Angels,” a memorial at Whitney Plantation to the 2200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish, where Whitney is located, in the 40 years before the end of slavery. It includes a state of an angel carrying an infant to heaven, along with the names of all of the children engraved on surrounding walls.

4 A parish is a local administrative unit in Louisiana, comparable to a county elsewhere in the United States. There are 64 parishes in the state and Whitney is located in St. John the Baptist Parish.

5 Montpelier and Monticello are plantation museum sites formerly owned by US Presidents James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively, in the state of Virginia.

6 For a discussion of these issues, see Blassingame (1975) and Hartman (1997, p. 11).

7 Dr. Seck’s next book, titled Africans, Cultures, and Slavery in Louisiana is forthcoming from the University of Louisiana Press.