Full Name
Ashley Rogers
Job Title
Executive Director
Organization/School
Whitney Plantation
Speaker Bio
Ashley Rogers is the founding executive director of Whitney Plantation, a museum and memorial in southern Louisiana with a mission to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the United States. She is passionate about social justice in the museum field and is an advocate for inclusive museum practice and environmental justice. She has served as an advisor on several national DEAI and social justice museum projects. She was an advisory team member and contributing writer for the MASS Action toolkit; the Inclusive Historian’s Handbook and Montpelier’s Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites: A Rubric of Best Practices. She currently serves as an advisory member of the American Alliance of Museums’ working group on repatriation, restitution and reparations. She has written frequently about interpretation and leadership in the museum field. Most recently, she was a contributing author in the edited volumes Inclusive Museum Leadership and Rethinking American Disasters: New Essays in Cultural, Political and Environmental History.
Ashley holds a Ph.D. in History from Louisiana State University. Her dissertation, Grass, Scrap, Burn: Labor, Environment and Memory at Whitney Plantation, 1860-1992, is a labor history of Whitney Plantation that focuses primarily on the Jim Crow era, emphasizing connections between plantations and petrochemicals in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. Her dissertation is based in part on oral histories she conducted with former Whitney Plantation residents between 2015 – 2024. Her M.A. is in history with a focus on museum studies from Colorado State University.
Since Whitney Plantation and its surrounding communities were devastated by Hurricane Ida in 2021, Ashley has spoken frequently at conferences, symposia and with the media about the need to protect cultural heritage sites in our climate crisis. She has made environmental justice and climate change key aspects of the museum’s interpretive programming. She is a champion of historic preservation as a method to fight industrial expansion in Cancer Alley.
Ashley holds a Ph.D. in History from Louisiana State University. Her dissertation, Grass, Scrap, Burn: Labor, Environment and Memory at Whitney Plantation, 1860-1992, is a labor history of Whitney Plantation that focuses primarily on the Jim Crow era, emphasizing connections between plantations and petrochemicals in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. Her dissertation is based in part on oral histories she conducted with former Whitney Plantation residents between 2015 – 2024. Her M.A. is in history with a focus on museum studies from Colorado State University.
Since Whitney Plantation and its surrounding communities were devastated by Hurricane Ida in 2021, Ashley has spoken frequently at conferences, symposia and with the media about the need to protect cultural heritage sites in our climate crisis. She has made environmental justice and climate change key aspects of the museum’s interpretive programming. She is a champion of historic preservation as a method to fight industrial expansion in Cancer Alley.
