A Words Are Monuments public art intervention by The Natural History Museum and The Descendants Project
Across Louisiana’s River Parishes, street signs, place names, and historic landmarks commemorate generations of plantation owners and industrialists. But another geography exists alongside the official one: a landscape shaped by emancipation, rebellion, Maroon communities, Black cultural traditions, and generations of collective struggle to defend the land.
Mapping Freedom is a site-specific public art intervention that makes this geography visible. Developed in collaboration with The Descendants Project, the project uses the familiar visual language of official street signs and civic wayfinding to reclaim the authority to name and commemorate place.
A series of ten street signs mark histories of resistance and liberation, from the 1811 German Coast Uprising and Black Union soldiers to the cultural legacies of jazz pioneers and contemporary grassroots victories against industrial expansion. Each sign designates a “Passage” rather than a conventional street or road—a reference to the pasajes, the networks of Maroon settlements and escape routes that connected enslaved Africans and freedom seekers in colonial Louisiana.
The intervention also includes a large, hand-painted welcome sign by artist Breanna Thompson, proclaiming “Welcome to the Emancipated Community of Wallace.” The designation carries particular significance for the descendants who continue to live on and defend this land, recognizing a history of freedom and community formation that is often overshadowed by the region’s plantation and petrochemical industries.
Beyond commemorating overlooked histories, the signs challenge who has the authority to define a place, whose histories become visible in the landscape, and how public memory can serve ongoing struggles for land, belonging, and self-determination.
The intervention was developed as part of Beyond Cancer Alley: A Descendant-Led Journey Through Louisiana’s River Parishes, a November 13, 2026 tour bringing frontline environmental justice leaders together for solidarity-building, storytelling, exchange, and community celebration. With many of the signs intended to remain in place beyond the gathering, Mapping Freedom contributes to The Descendants Project’s ongoing efforts to reclaim history as a resource for protecting land, strengthening community identity, and shaping the region’s future.
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A program of Words Are Monuments, our multi-year initiative mobilizing place names and public memory as tools for resistance, cultural resurgence, and collective repair.
