NATCHEZ — A new Forks of the Road traveling exhibit will showcase vanguard information about the site and add one more piece to the proverbial puzzle of the development of the South during slavery.

Ser Seshs Ab Heter-C.M. Boxley designed the exhibit with a grant from the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program under the National Park Service. He said the exhibit goes beyond normal history of enslaved persons with information that sets precedents for research.

The exhibit, which Boxley said is both a reading and visual exhibit, is made up of 11 six by eight foot panels that give information, charts and pictures on different aspects of the Forks of the Road.

“When I first saw it, I was just astounded of the size of it, and the fact that the work I’ve done is displayed larger than life,” Boxley said.

The most innovative panel, Boxley said, will give people the opportunity to view actual copies of bills of sale from the Forks of the Road. The panel is complemented by a distribution chart that shows buyers, sellers, slaves sold and the slaves’ destinations.

Other panels of the exhibit will show slave trading routes to the deep South, as well as an update of the research of the four enslavement sale sites.

One panel will illustrate the efforts to convert slaves to Christianity and how slaves survived the rules and laws of slavery.

“These people had to, within their own humanity and spirit, survive the rules and hold onto their humanity,” Boxley said

The exhibit uses sources such as slave narratives and slave owner diaries such as that of Bennett Barrow, who was a Louisiana slave owner.

Boxley said the exhibit is of museum quality and he hopes to have it debuted nationally sometime by February, which is Black History Month.

“We would want to have this exhibit debut on a national level at some significant venue,” he said.

The most difficult part of creating the exhibit, Boxley said, was searching for the bills of sale. He said the exhibit is the culmination of his 16 years of research and work at the Forks of the Road.

Boxley said the exhibit not only speaks to the heritage of African-Americans, but it also speaks to all types of people who have benefited from the institution of chattel slavery, which is enslavement supported by law. He said the exhibit will give people a chance get the story of slaves’ struggles and life, a story he said is not often told in the area.

“There is a huge tour that promotes slavery estates without promoting the backs on which those slave estates were built,” he said.

“It was out of the blood, sweat and tears of chattel slavery,” Boxley said.