Revolt1811 Museum and Galleries

08/30/2026

08/21/2026

08/05/2026

Survivors of the slave ship Wanderer.

The Wanderer was originally built in New York as a luxury pleasure yacht. In 1858, it was purchased by wealthy Southern businessman Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar and a group of investors who converted it into an illegal slave ship. By then, the United States had outlawed the transatlantic importation of enslaved Africans for fifty years. Congress had banned the trade in 1808, making the importation of enslaved people a federal crime, even though slavery itself remained legal in much of the country.

In October 1858, the Wanderer sailed to the West African coast, where hundreds of African men, women, and children were kidnapped, forced aboard the ship, and packed into horrific conditions for the Atlantic crossing. Historical records indicate that approximately 487 people were forced onto the vessel. After a voyage lasting about six weeks, around 409 survived the journey and arrived at Jekyll Island, Georgia, on November 28, 1858. Dozens died before ever reaching American shores.

To avoid detection, the survivors were secretly dispersed across Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida and sold into slavery. News of the illegal voyage quickly spread, causing outrage across the northern United States. The federal government prosecuted Lamar, the ship's captain, and others involved in the conspiracy multiple times. Despite substantial evidence, no convictions were secured, exposing the reluctance of the legal system to hold wealthy enslavers accountable.

For many years, the Wanderer was believed to be the last American slave ship. Historians now recognize that the Clotilda made another illegal voyage in 1860, transporting about 110 captive Africans from the Kingdom of Dahomey to Mobile, Alabama. Even so, the Wanderer remains the last documented ship to bring such a large group of kidnapped Africans into the United States.

What makes this history especially powerful is that it happened long after the slave trade had officially been outlawed. It reminds us that laws alone do not guarantee justice when greed, racism, and political interests stand in the way of enforcement. The lives stolen aboard the Wanderer reveal how determined some were to preserve slavery, even by openly violating federal law.

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07/28/2026

07/21/2026

A CEMETERY OF THEIR OWN...
In February 1886, a group of formerly enslaved African American men-Jacob McKinley, George Graham, Robert Grant, Charles Morgan Albert Watts, and John Render-—petitioned the state of Georgia for a charter to establish the South-View Cemetery Association. The new cemetery gave African Americans an alternative to Atlanta's segregated burial grounds and provided an environment where they could be buried with dignity:
Originally 25 acres, South-View has expanded to approximately 100 acres and contains over 70,000 burials.

In carlier times, the modern concept of perpetual care did not exist.
Families held the sole responsibility of caring for the graves. Because many families have passed on or moved away, the Historic South-View Preservation Foundation, Inc. was organized in 2004 to raise awareness and support to aid in the preservation of South-View's unique historic landscape. The mission of the Foundation is to record, preserve, restore, and interpret the art, history, and environment of the non-perpetual care sections of South-View Cemetery.

07/20/2026

07/20/2026

On June 7, 1892, a shoemaker from Faubourg Treme bought a first class ticket, sat down in the whites only car of the East Louisiana Railway, and waited to be arrested. He was not surprised when it happened. He had arranged it. ⚜️

Homer Plessy was a Creole of color, French speaking, Catholic, seven eighths white by the arithmetic Louisiana insisted on doing. That arithmetic was the point. The Comite des Citoyens, a committee of New Orleans Creole men of color who had watched Reconstruction be dismantled around them, chose him deliberately. They bought the ticket. They hired a private detective to make sure he was actually detained rather than quietly ignored. They even told the railroad in advance, because the railroad hated the Separate Car Act too, on the grounds that running extra cars cost money. Everything about that afternoon at the Press Street depot was engineered by people who understood exactly what they were building.

They lost. In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled seven to one against them and gave America the phrase separate but equal, and with it the legal architecture of Jim Crow for the next fifty eight years. Justice Harlan's lone dissent, that the Constitution is color blind, would not become law until Brown v. Board in 1954. Plessy pleaded guilty in 1897, paid his twenty five dollar fine, and went back to work. He sold insurance. He died in 1925 and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, and for most of a century almost nobody visited.

They were not victims of that ruling. They were its authors' opponents, and they knew the odds when they started. 🌙 In 2022, Louisiana pardoned him. One hundred and thirty years late, in a city that had known where he was buried the entire time.