West Baton Rouge Museum Podcast

Presented by Gale Breaux Smith. Gayle Breaux Smith, genealogist and president of the Breaux du Monde Association, traces the journey of her Breaux ancestors over 360 years from France, Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, and, of course, Louisiana where they settled in the area currently known as Breaux Bridge. Although the stories follow her Breaux ancestry, this is the story of essentially all Acadian families.

Presented by Michael Miner. Mr. Miner got his start in filmmaking in 1991 at the Sundance Film Festival with the short film, “Glycerine Tears” and worked for a decade on commercial projects. Since 2002, Miner has devoted his career entirely to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, documenting the master architect’s buildings in such films as “Sacred Spaces”, “A Child of the Sun”, and “Romanza”, which covers the California work of Mr. Wright...

Presented by Dr. Michael Desmond. Dr. Desmond will discuss the designs of the key Frank Lloyd Wright houses from the museum’s living room provided by Denicola’s. Dr. Desmond’s research explores the community-scale work of Frank Lloyd Wright in the context of Emersonian themes in American history and the modernist interest in subject/object perception...

Presented by Jari Honora. This presentation offers a brief overview of genealogical research for African Americans in the post-Civil War period. The talk is focused primarily on tracing enslaved ancestors back through generations of captivity, including methods for identifying the last-known slave owners of African Americans in the antebellum period. Mr...

Moderated by Dr. Rachel Emanuel. The panel discussion will be led by author and documentarian, Dr. Rachel Emanuel of the Southern University Law Center and will feature former Southern University students who were a part of the local Civil Rights Movement that changed history. Hear what several of them feel about their actions then and their desire to pass the torch to new generations of history makers.

Presented by Dr. Erin Greenwald. Dr. Greenwald is the curator and historian for the Historic New Orleans Collection. She will discuss the research behind the “Purchased Lives” exhibition and the importance of grappling with the complex histories of race and slavery in the 21st century. The exhibit, “Purchased Lives,” is a traveling exhibition from the Historic New Orleans Collection with support from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities...

Presented by John DeSantis. On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families during a spree lasting more than two hours. The violence erupted due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. Fear, rumor and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action to create an epic tragedy. A future member of the U.S...

Presented by Dr. Lori Latrice Martin, associate professor of African American Studies at Louisiana State University and Pastor Raymond A. Jetson of Star Hill Church and CEO of MetroMorphosis. South Baton Rouge is an African American community in Baton Rouge. It served as one of the first places African Americans could receive a high school education in the state. The three mile area around historic McKinley High School was the site of the nation's first successful bus boycott...

Presented by Dr. Lori Latrice Martin, associate professor of African American Studies at Louisiana State University and Pastor Raymond A. Jetson of Star Hill Church and CEO of MetroMorphosis. South Baton Rouge is an African American community in Baton Rouge. It served as one of the first places African Americans could receive a high school education in the state. The three mile area around historic McKinley High School was the site of the nation's first successful bus boycott...

Presented by Dr. Julia Rose, director of the West Baton Rouge Museum. Her new book, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historical Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), tackles the extraordinary challenges of interpreting histories of slavery, war, genocide and mass oppression. Difficult histories pose significant resistances and challenges for museum workers and visitors...