Virginia McGee Richards in conversation with Nicole Moore and Crystal Sanders - The Inner Passage
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 7:00 PM
Location:
Constellations
135 Auburn Avenue, 2nd Floor
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
A deeply moving photographic and narrative history of a southern waterway that the enslaved were forced to build for mercantile shipping—but which they used to escape slavery.
With gorgeously rich tritone photographs and a hard-bound cover with tip-in, perfect for fine art or history lovers.
A Cappella Books is delighted to welcome award-winning documentary photographer Virginia McGee Richards to Constellations in honor of her new book, “The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway.” Richards will appear in conversation with Nicole Moore, Senior Director of Education at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.
This event is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for purchase.
About the Book
Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida.
In this book, Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history.
About the Author
Virginia Richards is an award-winning documentary photographer, historian, and environmental lawyer.
About the Conversation Partners
Nicole Moore leads all educational initiatives at the Center, including K-12, university, and lifelong learning. A public historian with more than 15 years of museum experience, her primary focus has been around the interpretation of enslavement at historic sites and museums. She has facilitated workshops and training sessions on best practices around the interpretation of slavery and how race and identity impact visitor learning, with a focus on bridging the gap between first- and third-person interpretation for all age groups.
Nicole is the President of the National Council on Public History and serves on the board of directors for the Slave Dwelling Project, Old North Illuminated, and the Georgia Council for History Education. A published author, she has chapters in Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) and Interpreting the Civil War for Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), as well as Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism (Amherst College Press, 2021) and the forthcoming third edition of The Museum Educator’s Manual (Bloomsbury, 2026). Nicole is a featured story in Michele Norris’ Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2024).
Professor Crystal R. Sanders is an award-winning historian and Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Professor Sanders is the author of “A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle” and “A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs.” She currently serves on the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and as the Assistant Editor of the Journal of African American History.
