Ione E Burden Symposium 2025

The LSU Rural Life Museum invites you to the annual Ione E. Burden Symposium.

Her Roots, Her Rights: African American History and Heritage

LSU Rural Life Museum presents its first annual theme in 2025. Women's Work: History Through Her Story, kicks off at the Ione E Burden Symposium by focusing on the resilience, contributions, and legacies of African American women in Louisiana. In alignment with Black History Month, this symposium explores select stories of women maintaining familial roots and helped to forge a brighter future.

Opening Remarks:

Joyce Jackson, PhD is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology and Director of African & African American Studies at Louisiana State University. She is the recipient of the Board of Regents Award to Louisiana Artists and Scholars (ATLAS). “Hidden Currents: The Rural Roots of Jazz in South Louisiana”; has served a President of the Louisiana Folklore Society; and served as co-curator of “New Orleans Black Mardi Gras Indians: Exploring a Community Tradition from an Insider’s View.” Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. She also served as the LSU facilitator for the Rural Life Museum’s initiative, Reimagining and expanding “Interpretation: Moving Toward Museum Accreditation.”

Dr. Jackson will deliver opening remarks, offering her insights on the symposium theme and its relevance to Louisiana history and the Rural Life Museum.

 Featured Speakers:

LaKisha Michelle Simmons, PhD is Associate Professor of History and Women's & Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans and the co-editor of The Global History of Black Girlhood. She is currently working on a book on the history of Black family life after the Civil War called Labor, Love, and Loss: Black Women, their Children and the Ancestors. 

Dr. Simmons will present “Generations: Tracing Black Families in Slavery and Freedom.”

Mary Farmer-Kaiser, PhD is the Dean of the Graduate School and a Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. An award-winning teacher, she specializes in the history of citizenship, southern women’s history, and public policy. Her research includes the book Freedwomen and the Freedmen’s Bureau: Race, Gender, and Public Policy in the Age of Emancipation (Fordham University Press) and co-editing Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2 (University of Georgia Press) with Shannon Frystak. She has participated in Smithsonian Institution-led teacher education initiatives at the national level and directed U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History programs for Lafayette Parish educators. A recognized leader in graduate education, she remains ever committed to expanding access to high-quality education and believes in its transformative power for individuals, families, and communities.

Dr. Farmer-Kaiser will present “Friend and Foe: Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau in the Fight for Freedom.”

Dr. Shannon Frystak, PhD is a Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the History Department at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Her first book, Our Minds on Freedom: Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana examined the state's female civil rights activists, placing them at the center of the history of the movement. She has published widely in several other collections and is author and co-editor of the second volume of Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, with Dr. Mary Farmer-Kaiser. Her current research looks at the extraordinary, and wild, life of Lucille Watson, owner, manager, and chatelaine of Cross Keys Plantation in Tensas Parish. 

Dr. Frystak will present "Civil Rights are Economic Rights: Louisiana Women and the Struggle for Black Equality.”

$45.00 General Admission

$30.00 Friends of the LSU Rural Life Museum, Docents, Faculty of Louisiana Universities (ID required)

$15.00 Students of Louisiana Universities (ID required)

Admission includes lunch, meet the speakers, and admission to

Women's Work: History Through Her Story exhibition.