Freedmen's Town Historic District

In the United States, a freedmen's town was an African American municipality or community built by freedmen, formerly enslaved people who were emancipated during and after the American Civil War. These towns emerged in a number of states, most notably Texas. In the Piedmont region of Virginia, they were known as freetowns, usually places near or bordering where formerly enslaved African Americans lived and worked on plantations under the system of chattel slavery, oftentimes on lands donated by former masters. They are also known as freedom colonies, from the title of a book by Sitton and Conrad.