The state of Louisiana has memorialised the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history
with a road sign.
I'm glad that there is a sign that marks it but I also think that to mark
this most magnificent event with a sign in a traffic island,
you know, by the side of a highway, that's crazy.
Other people have tried to sort of mark this event often focusing on the brutality and the suppression
of the rebellion and what I'm interested in is
the liberatory aspects of the people who are fighting to free themselves.
For me being born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, my whole experience in Louisiana
has been learning more about my roots and about my family's experience
before me, my ancestors …
So just getting this opportunity here, is really powerful for me.
I'm a heavy equipment operator for the city.
I also work at carriages in the evening
and I ride horses.
That's the story of my life.
This is going to be the most information I've ever had from the other end of it.
Could they teach you what they want you to know in history, in schools,
– Not this.
Yeah, I ain't know anything.
I was interested in horses and if I knew black people ride horses in the 1800s,
I would have probably been a little bit more intrigued by that
when I actually was being that I only knew black people were slaves in the 1800
as far as the books that I read.
This is a new way in for people to look at this history and to say, well here's what's
really been suppressed and something that should be celebrated,
this is something that people should be truly proud of.
It could have changed US and world history.
Imagine if there were an African republic in modern day Louisiana
but before westward expansion has really happened, so does Texas secede from Mexico?
Does Los Angeles become part of California?
Would enslave people all over the rest of the Lower South have decided,
'well, oh, we should rebel an escape there'.
So it is, you know, a hugely significant event in US history and that history has been buried.
We against slavery!
Join us! – Join us!
On to New Orleans! – On to New Orleans!
Freedom or death! – Freedom or death!
I'm not acting, I'm having a whole experience with a bunch of other black people
who have come to New Orleans for multiple different reasons to take part in this.
Being around other black people, carrying weapons, embodying the spirit of freedom
and emancipation, I think that's really powerful.
Liberty! – Liberty!
I imagine today will be very emotional, spiritual, as we are literally walking past
oil refineries and street malls and other locations that were previously sugar plantations.
I know this may not be the appropriate time but my family owns this land,
I grew up here, my mother, my grandfather and just from me,
from my family and my ancestors who may have been a part of this,
I just want to say thank y'all for which y'all are doing because nothing like this has ever been done
so thank you all are very much, I appreciate it.
Well, a lot of my artwork looks at how the past not only sets the stage for the present,
but how it sort of exists in the present in new form.
In the early 1800s, slavery was the foundation of the economy in Louisiana.
In the 1900s oil became the foundation of the world economy but centred here.
There's a reason why that region is known as cancer alley.
And so these petrochemical plants were put down literally on top of the graves of enslaved people
that had died in that region.
If you look at the woodlands, which is where this rebellion started,
is a poor neighbourhood that people still living have memories of how
their fathers or grandfathers worked in the fields.
I mean, you can see quite literally the map of slavery right in that place.
Those who wish to die free, rise with me!
I mean, just … let's get along.
Let it be!
History is history, you can't remake history.
A lot of us have nothing to do with it.
Freedom or death! – Freedom or death!
I think it's a bunch of bull crap, myself.
I mean, we let them have what they want.
They got their wage, they get their wage.
– Who do you mean, they?
I mean, the black folks.
Has anybody ever said that you have racist views on this topic?
Not to me personally, really,
but I imagine I got a few of them who probably would.
Perhaps the struggle for reparations or murder by police or, you know, the mass incarceration
those are all questions that both have its origins and roots in enslavement
but the people fighting to change that today are actually walking in the tradition of
enslaved people who are fighting for freedom and emancipation.
Liberty! - Liberty!
We have lost a loved one to probably state violence,
and murder.
This is the life you live every single day, fighting for justice because
you don't get it when the police murder your loved one.
So, all of that embodied this walk that we took.
Freedom or death! – Freedom or death!
I feel like for myself, like, if there's a stuck energy behind the slavery period of history,
and us coming together to do this act is
releasing energy and turning it into like a positive …
These are the people that, you know, fought, in some cases with their lives,
so others could be free.
This is a project about rebellion, about freedom and emancipation
and really black people having agency within enslavement
and frankly having the most radical ideas of freedom in the United States at the time.
Freedom! – Freedom!
Join us! – Join us!