Arlington County Government, VA Here/Now, 11 Feb 2009

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From YouTube: FREEDMEN'S VILLAGE GOOD PT2

Description

A segment of AVN's monthly magazine program, Here/now, the second segment of our studio interview with Dr. Talmadge Williams, discusses the efforts being made to make the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington a reality.

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And we're back again with dr. Williams some questions for you we're talking about the history in the past. What about in a hundred years later in the future? Where can one go to visit Friedman's village? Where is it ad? What does it look like Freedman,.

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Village does not exist today because that's where the Arlington Cemetery has covered that, but.

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Do have a few symbols left, for example, when Friedman's Village was closed.

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Much of that many of the people moved into Arlington and they bought the churches with them in different things. One of the churches would be about Sian. Oh.

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Still have the Bell.

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From Friedman's village is called, the church was called old Bell, so they have that you can find that in the vestibule of Mount Zion. Today there are many other things. For example, Lomax the.

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Boards from some of the houses they tore down and Friedman's village came over to help build a low mass.

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They rebuilt Lomax several times.

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Churches that were started in Friedman's village live on today. Yes,.

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They do in modern time you find them in Saint, John's and Macedonia and those churches. Yes,.

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And we still Howard University is still a legacy. Yes,.

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Doing so well and.

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Speaking of that, in preserving history and moving forward I hear that you have a fabulous project, a labor of love, I like to say that you're working on and that's the black Heritage Museum. Can you tell us a little bit of that about that project? Yes,.

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We're going to build a museum, we're.

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To build it and very close to the site of where a Freedmen's village was, and you can find it on the map, we'll find it down here the where the naval annexes are right. There is where a Freedmen's village. So, of course, that's a cemetery now and.

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Our museum will be these last two buildings over here. Arlington worked very hard to get that land through the county manager and Arlington County. That was a swap of land and.

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Were able to acquire the land so.

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Have the line it's just a matter of waiting for those buildings to be removed and.

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Those buildings are removed, then we will start actual building a museum. That's.

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Great and now what timeframe are you looking at that? Well.

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Moving so moving the military out of that Naval barracks has been quite a problem. They were due out before we're.

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Crane brac and that's stopped them; they still use it. So we hope in the next five or six years that.

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Will be out of there we'll have those buildings down, then we can start actually and.

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Now will it have what types of things will the museum have inside of it that you're looking to oh.

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We're looking at not only how we're not only looking for things that will show what existed back in those days for.

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We have a fella that has the shoes of his mother, his grandmother, who actually walked from Freedmen's village, up to New York, to claim her property when she got there, the property was gone and she had to come back to.

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Her deed and she walked all the way back. We have the deed. We have.

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So that will be in our number other things would be in this museum. Also, it's going to be kind of a shared museum with the Arlington Historical Society on one end, with the aerial exit.

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On the other end, you would have things like Friedman's, village and etc, and we have a space for educational projects where people can do research come in and hold research projects. Students can come there and visit. We.

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To help it to be large enough that we'll be able to hold events there, since we don't have.

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Facilities that sounds absolutely like a wonderful project that.

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You're doing and it's.

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Interesting that we're here in Arlington- and we see these various things- we see the cemetery pretty much I- do I travel that way every day and not to know that it's full of such rich history and to be a part of that, and- and we thank you- dr. Williams- for working so hard these many years to see this vision come to fruition and educating the community. So.