The new Historic New Orleans Collection exhibit “The Trail They Blazed” got its start about a decade ago with the inception of an oral history project called NOLA Resistance, an effort to record the voices of participants in the city’s mid-century contributions to the national Civil Rights Movement.
Those contributions were substantial; the oral histories, which are archived at hnoc.org, fill more than 50 hours. Some of them have been heard in a traveling exhibit that has been touring the city since September 2023, including stops at the Tate, Etienne and Prevost Center, the University of Holy Cross, a couple of library locations, with more tour stops to come.
That traveling exhibit was a collaboration between HNOC’s staff and the local Civil Rights Movement participants themselves.
“So much of how the project is designed came from those meetings,” co-curator Eric Seiferth said in the June 15 Museumgoer story in the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate (read it here). “We wanted to reach a local audience with this (traveling) show, and we were excited about the idea of expanding our reach outwards from our French Quarter buildings. We decided that it was a great goal to go and meet New Orleanians where they were.”
The move to adapt some of that content — and add to it — for an in-gallery experience now places the NOLA Resistance voices where visitors to the city can hear them.
A Museumgoer Podcast interview with Seiferth is here. A video of the WWNO Museumgoer segment about the exhibit is here.
Images accompanying the podcast are below.
Thanks to Eric, and to you for reading and maybe listening.
Sign up for the free Museumgoer Newsletter here.
Questions, comments, corrections: [email protected].