For Immediate Release
Contact:
Brittany Racca
(337) 365-1540
(888) 942-3742
Shadows-on-the-Teche Awarded LEH Rebirth Grant
NEW IBERIA, La. ---  The Shadows-on-the-Teche is excited to announce that they are a recipient of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Rebirth Grant.

The grant will fund a Spring 2021 speaker series featuring four respected Louisiana historians who will present public programs on Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights history for southern Louisiana with a focus on Iberia Parish. This series is part of the reinterpretation work the Shadows is doing to tell a more complete history of the site and the people who lived and worked on the Weeks family plantations.

Speakers for the series include:

  • Dr. Charles Vincent, the Louis-Jetson-Lamar Cooperation Professor of History at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, who will discuss Reconstruction and Jim Crow history in southern Louisiana;

  • Dr. Ian Beamish, Assistant Professor of History at University of Louisiana at Lafayette;

  • Dr. Phebe Hayes, native and life-long resident of Iberia Parish who is a descendant of West Africans enslaved on area plantations, including the Shadows, during the antebellum period;

  • Kenetha Harrington, PhD candidate in Anthropology at Louisiana State University and 2019 National Trust for Historic Preservation summer intern at Shadows where she worked on locating genealogical records for descendants of African Americans connected to the Shadows both during times of slavery and after freedom.

The series, once officially announced, will be offered free of charge. To stay-up-to-date on Shadows programs and events, please follow them on Facebook and Instagram and sign up for their event newsletter.

About the Shadows-on-the-Teche:
The Shadows-on-the-Teche, National Trust for Historic Preservation site, opened to the public in 1961 with the mission to preserve the buildings, landscape, collections, and historical integrity of the site; to research and interpret through education programs a 19th century southern Louisiana plantation economy and community and their evolution; and to encourage an appreciation of and interest in historic preservation. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns and operates the Shadows-on-the-Teche, is a private, non-profit organization. The Shadows does not receive funding from federal, state, parish, or city government. The site supports itself through admissions, special programs and events, and donations to the Friends of the Shadows. For more information, visit ShadowsOnTheTeche.org.

For more information, please contact Jayd Buteaux at (337) 369-6446 or [email protected]
###
The Iberia Parish Convention & Visitors Bureau is the official parish marketing agency promoting New Iberia, Avery Island, Jefferson Island, Jeanerette, Loreauville and Delcambre as a destination. Marketing programs target leisure travelers, business travelers, media, entertainment industry, and the travel trade including group tour planners, meeting planners, sports planners and special event planners. The bureau operates a parish welcome center in New Iberia, Louisiana.
For more information on parish events and tourism assets, call the bureau at 337-365-1540 or visit IberiaTravel.com