Events

The Amazing Castle, an interactive bi-lingual (English and Spanish) exhibition featuring knights, kings, queens and a dragon, will invite visitors to travel back in time to a medieval village filled with opportunities for problem-solving, storytelling and imaginative play.

King-sized learning adventures abound in the child-sized fortress. As they move through the 2,000 square foot medieval community, visitors become inhabitants of the castle village playfully exploring the interconnectedness of community members in a setting inspired by fantasy and history.

Designed specifically for children ages 2 to 10 and their caregivers, the exhibit focuses on literacy, inspiring imagination and supporting tangible life lessons: Share, Have Respect, Help Others, Work Together, Be Responsible, and Believe in Yourself to help young children navigate their world and succeed in their own community.

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This exhibit makes use of a wealth of first hand evidence to illuminate the experience of Anderson County’s black population between 1850 and 1868. This time frame encompasses the immense changes that occurred from the antebellum period of American slavery, through the Civil War, and into the crucial first years of the Reconstruction Era.

How did African Americans in our area adjust to life as free people? What did interactions between black and white citizens look like before and after Emancipation? What role did the US government and the Freedmen’s Bureau play in assisting Anderson’s freed people?

Facing Freedom investigates answers to these and other topics that helped to define the African American experience for decades that followed.

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It was always a journey of unknowns; leaving in the middle of the night with only the North Star as a directional guide; each step a promise to freedom. Come see, in part, what it must have been
like to be a passenger on the Underground Railroad.

Visitors will be able to visually travel one of the many routes that “fugitives” took as they traversed rugged terrain, braved the elements, then were guided from one secret, safe location to the
next by an ever-changing, clandestine group known as the Underground Railroad.

Through Darkness to Light features more than 40 strikingly dramatic color photographs and narratives that help people imagine what the long road to freedom may have looked like as seen through the eyes of those who made the epic trek. Though there were numerous routes of countless miles, this series of photographs documents sites, cities, and places that freedom-seekers passed through during their 2,000-mile journey out from the cotton plantations near Natchitoches, Louisiana, all the way to the Canadian border.

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