The Inner Passage: Presidential Conversation and Artist Reception (National Humanities Center)

The National Humanities Center will celebrate the opening of its new exhibit, The Inner Passage, with a public conversation between the artist Virginia McGee Richards and NHC President Blair LM Kelley, followed by a reception. In their conversation, Richards and Kelley will discuss the striking landscapes and stories surrounding the Inner Passage, the network of canals constructed by enslaved people in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. These canals, documented by Richards in The Inner Passage: An Untold Story of Black Resistance Along a Southern Waterway (2026) not only facilitated the region's plantation economy, but also were used for over a century by enslaved people seeking freedom in Spanish Florida.