KATHE HAMBRICK

2019

KATHE HAMBRICK

    Kathe Hambrick is the Director of Interpretation and Curator for the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen, Louisiana. She is the Founder of the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville, Louisiana and the River Road African Burial Grounds Coalition. She was successful in leading the efforts to preserve 1200 graves found in a slave cemetery on Shell Oil property.

    Kathe left a career with IBM as a Systems Analyst in southern California to return to Louisiana in 1991 where she inherited the family mortuary. For the past 25 years she has dedicated her life to educating the public about Louisiana’s rural history and culture in the sugar parishes along the Mississippi River

    Hambrick holds a master’s degree in Museum Studies from Southern University in New Orleans and is a former past president of the nation Association of African American Museums. She served on the task force for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History & Culture. She serves on the Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission and recently received the Charles Hudson Visionary Award from the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus. She has numerous other awards to her credit, but is celebrating the release of JUKE JOINT MEN, a book that she co-authored about fourteen blues musicians from the sugarcane region of south Louisiana.