The Museum for Abolition and Beyond at the John Thompson Legacy Center
Freedom to Grow is developing the Museum for Abolition and Beyond at the John Thompson Legacy Center to reflect the brilliance of resistance on the land now known as Angola Prison.
We need your presence and support to create the art, the archives, and the gardens that invite us to imagine a landscape without prisons.
The Space:
The John Thompson Legacy Center
1212 St Bernard Ave, 7th Ward
New Orleans, LA
John Thompson’s Legacy
The John Thompson Legacy Center (1212 St. Bernard Ave) honors the expansive imagination and impact of John Thompson (JT), beloved friend, movement leader and death row exonoree, who founded Resurrection After Exoneration in the building in 2007. JT passed in 2017, but his memory continues to inspire the work of Freedom to Grow and all he mentored. To learn more about his foundational work in centering the voices of those most impacted by the criminal legal system, and his fight to hold prosecutors accountable to honoring people over convictions, visit the John Thompson Archive.
The Mission:
Freedom to Grow
Freedom to Grow has stewarded this building since 2021, when Creative Director jackie sumell collaborated with LaVerne Thompson and the Promise of Justice Initiative to re-open the building in the wake of Hurricane Ida as a mutual aid distribution site. When the immediate needs of the storm passed, the John Thompson Legacy Center was established as an organizing and arts community space in the historic 7th Ward.
Freedom to Grow emerges from the incredible sacrifices of incarcerated elders that have inspired over 25 years of creative practices and abolitionist work by artist jackie sumell.
We believe that, alongside our movement elders, plants gift us antidotes to punitive systems, and provide us with roadmaps to an abolitionist future. In collaboration with currently-incarcerated people, we grow gardens that act as living storybooks for abolition, including Solitary Gardens and The Abolitionist’s Sanctuary. The gardens fuel our Abolitionist’s Apothecary, which provides free and sliding-scale wellness support for all who have been directly-impacted by the criminal punishment system.
The Museum for Abolition and Beyond is a testament to JT’s legacy, and the lineage of elders, including Herman Wallace, Robert King, and Albert Woodfox, that have inspired the work of jackie sumell and Freedom to Grow.
The Vision:
The Museum for Abolition and Beyond
Legacy of Resistance at Angola
Across 18,000 acres in Louisiana, the soil currently occupied by the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola represents over 200 years of continuous confinement, forced labor — and an extraordinary legacy of resistance. From enslavement to mass incarceration, generations of people have turned to creative practice and collective care as tools for survival and transformation.
Through our Resurrection Archives, interpreted through storytelling, art, and gardens, the Museum for Abolition and Beyond will uplift the stories of those who have defied, survived, and eradicated confinement, providing inspiration to our movements today.
New Gardens
Freedom to Grow needs your support to establish new Legacy Gardens on St. Bernard Ave, in the heart of the historic 7th Ward of New Orleans. Our Legacy Gardens will be vital green spaces filled with works of art that tell the stories of resistance in Louisiana. They will also be a refuge on a busy and vibrant block, providing much-needed flood management, shade, and space for rest, reflection, and learning. We are currently fundraising to buy two unused lots to achieve this goal.
The Museum for Abolition and Beyond is an incubator for new visions of the future, offering support and space for learning, imagination, and play. The museum in all its parts embodies the ethos of a thriving natural ecosystem with each individual aspect influencing and being influenced by the other. Just as plants, air, water, sunlight and soil play vital roles in each others’ existence and persistence so too do the various aspects of the museum:
Artists-in-Residence create new visionary works of art, inspired by the research in the Resurrection Archives
Organizers wellness is supported by the Abolitionist’s Apothecary, and they are given space to dream new worlds, guided by lessons from elders who have shifted the arc of the universe from behind the walls of prison
Plant-lovers, herbalists, and the herbal curious create new blends and possibilities for healing, guided by the abolitionist teachings of plants, grown in collaboration with incarcerated loved ones.
Currently and formerly-incarcerated voices are central to the space, guiding the crafting of the archive, exhibitions, and activations.
To achieve this ambitious vision, we need your support. We are currently fundraising to buy two lots on St. Bernard Ave to establish verdant public gardens adjacent to the John Thompson Legacy, and to begin significant upgrades to the building, including establishing it as a fully-solar community lighthouse.
To support us as we build a landscape without prisons, reach out to alexis@freedomtogrow.org.