Freedman's Village Diaspora Scholars Tour
A Natural Add-On to Arlington National Cemetery Tours
Every day, motorcoaches deliver thousands of visitors to Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) — steps from the very ground where Freedman's Village once stood. This 13-stop narrated route extends that visit into the story ANC alone cannot tell: the community where over 3,000 formerly enslaved men and women built a life, churches, a school, and a neighborhood on this land, and whose impact still shapes Arlington today.
In 1863, as the Civil War raged across Virginia, the federal government created something unprecedented on the hills overlooking Washington, D.C. On land that had once been Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House plantation, they established Freedman’s Village, a contraband camp for formerly enslaved people that would become America’s first pre-planned black community.
What began as a wartime necessity evolved into something far more significant: a model for African American community development that would shape Arlington County, Virginia for generations to come and long after it's destruction by the federal government in 1900 when it was finally closed.
Freedman’s Village residents weren’t passive recipients of government aid. They were active community builders who established institutions, created businesses, were elected to powerful positions in goverment, and laid the groundwork for lasting African American communities in northern Virginia.
Their accomplishments in becoming leaders in Arlington are remarkable.
What Students Will Experience
• Thirteen stops through the communities that Freedman's Village residents moved to following the closure of their neighborhood
• Three disembark locations where students step into the history, not just past it
• Curated historical artifacts with direct connections to the community's story
• The Butler-Holmes community, founded, built, and led by two Black politicians and developers from Freedman's Village
• The Queen City and East Arlington neighborhoods, destroyed by the federal government for roads to the Pentagon
• Generations of Black community life and institutions that thrived in new locations, even when the government destroyed them over and over again
Wilma at the intersection of Clayton Drive & Grant Avenue in ANC where Freedman's Village once stood.
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