Bridgeport’s Freeman Center receives $1M Mellon Foundation grant

The Mary and Eliza Freeman Center for History and Community in Bridgeport is the recipient of a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, through the Foundation”™s Humanities in Place program.

The grant will be used to support organizational capacity, a planning and feasibility study and related public cultural heritage programming. 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.

“This award validates the value of over a decade of hard work, as well as the promise of a transformative vision for the future,” said Bernicestine McLeod Bailey, chairperson of the Freeman Center”™s board of directors. “It significantly increases the depth and breadth of our capacity to deliver and sustain high caliber programming and services to the Greater Bridgeport and Fairfield County communities and enables us to advance toward our goal of becoming a Center with National impact and prominence.”

Photo of the Mary & Eliza Freeman Houses by Phil Hall