Donation preserving sugar-cane-planting machine at museum
Posted by Advocate staff report | Filed under Resorts, internet
A donation from a local company is helping to preserve a sugar-cane-planting machine invented in the Ascension Parish community of Modeste.
However, River Road African American Museum Executive Director Kathe Hambrick Jackson said the museum needs an addition $15,000 to construct a permanent structure to house the machine, which was built by Leonard Julien in 1964.
A donation from CF Industries paid for the machine to be placed on a pad and temporarily covered, she said.
The structure housing the sugar-cane-planting machine, which was donated to the museum in 2002 by the Walet family, of Loreauville, would also be home to an outdoor eduction program using science, technology, engineering and math to teach children about the invention, Jackson said.
The machine housed at the Donaldsonville museum is the only prototype of Julien’s invention still in existence, she said. The machine was used by the Walet family for 30 years, she said.
For more information about the exhibits at the River Road African American Museum, visit the website: http://www.africanamericanmuseum.org.