“It was part of a network of black communities coming out of slavery in the post-emancipation era that clustered around each other for freedom, security and economic empowerment,” Gardullo explains. “Their structures reflected the needs of the community to worship as they saw fit, to educate their children in a world that hadn’t educated them before, and sustain them through living off the land that they now own.”

Source: For Nearly 150 Years, This One House Told a Novel Story About the African-American Experience | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian