Locust Grove

Locust Grove - Where Louisville Begins

561 Blankenbaker Lane, Louisville, KY 40207

Tuesday - Saturday 10:00am to 4:30pm

Self-Guided Tours of the Historic House are offered Thursdays – Saturdays from 12:00 – 3:00 pm. Grounds Tours are offered on Thursday, Fridays, and Saturdays at 11:00 am. The Museum Store and Gallery is open Tuesdays – Saturdays from 10:00 am – 4:30 pm.

The Enslaved at Locust Grove

Locust Grove is committed to telling the stories and interpreting the lives of the enslaved men, women, and children who lived and worked at Locust Grove. Learn More

Learn with Locust Grove

From our historic house to your home, explore and discover more about early 19th century Kentucky through our virtual programs and activities! Learn With Us

Upcoming Events

Living Room Lecture | Brigitte Fielder : I’ll Fly Away: Audubon, Freedom, and Flight

Wednesday, 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Paul Laurence Dunbar knows “why the caged bird sings” in part because of such connections between the enslavement of black people and the captivity of animals that were so prominent in nineteenth-century culture. Because birds, in particular, were viewed as symbols of freedom, arguments that they should not be caged abounded in discourses on pet-keeping. These arguments were often coupled with antislavery arguments, for example, in children’s stories about people who adopt abolitionist views in tandem with deciding to free birds from cages. Brigitte Fielder of University of Wisconsin-Madison reads the racial resonance of birds in John James Audubon’s narratives in this historical context of antislavery bird imagery and also against another “Bird—Slave” analogy: the “Flying African” stories of African American folklore. Reading the bird-slave analogy in this context, we see human-animal relations that defy more commonly discussed racist human-animal tropes and instead illustrate black resistance to oppression. Brigitte Fielder is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is (with Jonathan Senchyne) co-editor of Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African-American Print and the author of Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America. She is currently working on a book about racialized human-animal relationships in the long nineteenth century, showing how childhood becomes a key site for (often simultaneous) humanization and socialization. This event takes place over Zoom and will begin at 1:00 pm. The waiting room will open at 12:30 pm and guests will be able to log in to the meeting at that time. For questions about this event, please email Hannah Zimmerman at marketing@locustgrove.org. Thank you to PNC Bank and John and Jeannie Vezeau, for sponsoring the Living Room Lecture Series. Register for this program here: http://bit.ly/FielderLecture

View 2021 Events

American Alliance of Museums - Accredited Museum

Locust Grove - Where Louisville Begins

561 Blankenbaker Lane, Louisville, KY 40207

Tuesday - Saturday 10:00am to 4:30pm

Self-Guided Tours of the Historic House are offered Thursdays – Saturdays from 12:00 – 3:00 pm. Grounds Tours are offered on Thursday, Fridays, and Saturdays at 11:00 am. The Museum Store and Gallery is open Tuesdays – Saturdays from 10:00 am – 4:30 pm.

The Enslaved at Locust Grove

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Upcoming Events

Living Room Lecture | Brigitte Fielder : I’ll Fly Away: Audubon, Freedom, and Flight

Wednesday, 1:00pm - 2:30pm

Locust Grove is a National Historic Landmark owned by Louisville Metro Government and operated by Historic Locust Grove, Inc.