A panel version of the powerful and poignant traveling exhibition “Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865” will be coming to the Magnolia Plantation Unit of Cane River Creole National Historical Park in November 2016. “Purchased Lives” examines one of the most challenging eras of U.S. history. The panel display will be on view at Magnolia Plantation Nov. 1 – Dec. 13 from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. Over the next two years, the panel display will visit 10 sites around the state.

“Purchased Lives” examines the period between America’s 1808 abolishment of the international slave trade and the end of the Civil War, during which an estimated two million people were forcibly moved among the nation’s states and territories. The domestic trade wreaked new havoc on the lives of enslaved families, as owners and traders in the Upper South—Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, DC—sold and shipped surplus laborers to the developing Lower South—Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Many of those individuals passed through New Orleans, which was the largest slave market in antebellum America.

The display will be made up of 10 panels, which will allow it to travel more widely than the version containing original artifacts. The informative yet vibrant design will feature reproductions of period artifacts such as broadsides, paintings and prints illustrating the domestic slave trade, as well as ship manifests, financial documents and first-person accounts conveying the trade’s reach into all levels of antebellum society.

Magnolia Plantation is located at 5589 Hwy. 119 in Derry. Admission is free. Call 318-356-8441, ext. 200 or visit http://www.nps.gov/cari for more information, including details on exhibition-related programming.