Dr. Ibrahima Seck offered two lectures at the University of Washington in both Bothell and Seattle campuses, May 29 2018. His lectures discussed the history of the German Coast in the wider context of the Atlantic slave trade and touched on many topics related to the cultural legacies of slavery in Louisiana, which showed deeper and often ignored legacies of slavery related to culture. It is the conviction of the co-founder of the Whitney Plantation Museum that the history of slavery is not only a history of deportation and hard labor on tobacco and rice fields, and in/around indigo vats and sugar mills. Beyond building the original foundations of the US economy, the enslaved Africans and their descendants contributed to shaping and defining American culture and identity. Dr. Seck highlighted the importance of education and that of sites of memory as catalysts towards the Second American Revolution and the birth of post-racial America.
Ibrahima Seck is a member of the History department of University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD), Senegal. His research is mostly devoted to the historical and cultural links between West Africa and Louisiana with a special interest for religious beliefs, music, foodways, and miscellaneous aspects of culture. Dr. Seck is now holding the position of Director of research of the Whitney Plantation Slavery Museum located in St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana. He is the author of a book on this historic site entitled “Bouki fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation) Louisiana, 1750-1860. [New Orleans: UNO Press, 2014].