On a Kentucky Riverbank, a Path to Remembrance

Hannah Drake’s Un(Known) Project in Louisville is both a memorial to enslaved people whose stories will never be uncovered, and a challenge to unearth narratives hidden in attics and archives.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sometimes Hannah Drake stands at the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville, closes her eyes and tries to conjure the faces and stories of enslaved women, men and children who stood on that same land. What were they dreaming of as they looked across the river — just a mile wide in some places, far less in others — to Indiana, toward freedom? How many made the attempt to escape by disguising themselves and hiding away on a boat, by crossing on a skiff in the dark of night or on foot on narrower parts of the river when it froze? How many made it? Drake, a spoken-word poet, visual artist, author and an activist who has been a central voice in the Breonna Taylor protest movement, began thinking several years ago about the lost and the thin narratives of enslaved Louisvillians when she visited Natchez, Miss., and its Museum of African American History and Culture. One wall featured a map showing the slavery route from Louisville, down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, to Natchez, one of the largest slave-trading cities in the United States. She also saw the names of dozens of enslaved men, women and children shipped from Kentucky to Natchez. By the 1850s, Kentucky was one of the leading states exporting people to the Deep South — about 2,500 to 4,000 a year, according to Patrick A. Lewis, the director of collections and research at the Filson Historical Society in the city.