20th century
A01=Imani Perry
A01=Virginia Mcgee Richa
A01=Virginia Mcgee Richards
abolition
american history
anthology
anthropology
appalachia
architecture
Author_Imani Perry
Author_Virginia Mcgee Richa
Author_Virginia Mcgee Richards
biography
Category=AJ
Category=AJC
Category=NHTS
civil war
civil war books
classic
coffee table book
coffee table books
coffee table books travel
crafts
culture
education
emancipation
enslavement
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
essays
folklore
food
gardening
genealogy
geography
gift books
gifts
golf
haiti
harriet tubman
health
historical
history
history books
history of photography
journalism
literary fiction
music
nature
penguin classics paperback
photo
photo book
photography
photography books
photography coffee table books
quilting
race
reconstruction
russian
school
slavery
sociology
sociology books
translation
underground railroad
us history
war
world history
Product details
- ISBN 9780262051712
- Dimensions: 203 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Apr 2026
- Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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. The Intracoastal Waterway runs 3000 miles along the Eastern Seaboard between Massachusetts and Brownsville, Texas. The earliest canals on the Waterway were constructed by enslaved people living in the Charles Town colony in present-day South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history that unfolds in The Inner Passage, for over a hundred years, enslaved Black people used these canals constructed for white plantation owners to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida. Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs, detailed maps, and 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. Richards images, made with a wet plate collodion process, using the water of the fields and riverbanks of the Lowcountry, tell of resilience and loss along this ancient waterway. They include landscapes altered by slavery as well as portraits of Lowcountry descendants, each a window into a forgotten corner of Southern history, as well as centuries-old 'Witness Trees,' live oaks that have survived centuries of planting seasons, river baptism, torture, prayers, war, poverty, massacres, and lynchings. Together, these words and images and artifacts offer a powerful living map of history.
Virginia Richards is an award-winning documentary photographer, historian, and environmental lawyer. Imani Perry is a professor at Harvard University and the author of the National Book Award winning book South to America. James Estrin is a writer and staff photographer at the New York Times.
