Bridgeport”™s Mary & Eliza Freeman Center for History and Community has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the National Park Service as part of the Historic Preservation Fund”™s African American Civil Rights grant program.
“We are the only awardee from New England,” said Maisa Tisdale, president and CEO of the center. “This is not just a grant, it is an honor and a game changer. It will allow historic preservation of the 1848 Eliza Freeman House to begin.”
Founded in 2009, the Mary & Eliza Freeman Center owns the 1848 Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses in Bridgeport”™s South End. The homes, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are under restoration, are the last surviving structures of Little Liberia, a prosperous community of free Black and Native people that flourished in the antebellum era.
Photo of the Mary & Eliza Freeman Houses by Phil Hall
