From Slavery to Freedom

The Magnolia Plantation Slave Cabin Project

Magnolia Plantation's slave cabins have a unique history, in which they have been utilized from the time of antebellum slavery through emancipation and into the late 20th century by African-Americans, both enslaved and free.

While other historic sites have restored similar slave cabins and houses in the past for interpretation, no site has ever restored a series of structures that interpret African-American history from slavery to freedom and beyond. Magnolia is taking the unique and exciting opportunity to have this transitional interpretive area for African-American history that is unique and certain to garner national attention.

The “FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM” tour takes you to a unique street of slave cabins, occupied well into the 20th century that have been carefully preserved and restored to document the full arc of African-American life at Magnolia Plantation. Each cabin reflects a different period of the African-American experience at Magnolia – from slavery, to Reconstruction and on through the 1920s and the Civil Rights era providing an extraordinary perspective. Listen to a discussion of the lives of blacks on the Plantation, have a tour of the cabins, 40 – 45 minutes.

To read about the project and how these cabins and the landscape has been restored, please open the following file:

Project Overview 36kb

PROJECT UP-DATES: To read about each cabin's completion and current progress, please open the following files. These files will include progress reports as well as before and after pictures of each cabin as they are completed:

Cabin A Restoration Work Report 1.8Mb

Cabin D Restoration Work Report 1.1Mb

Cabin E Restoration Work Report 1.1Mb

Cabin E - 1900 Gardener's Cabin