There’s a section of Arlington National Cemetery, near the Iwo Jima Memorial, that contains graves unlike any other. The graves belong not to soldiers, but to freed slaves who lived on the grounds after the Civil War, in a thriving “Freedman’s Village.”
The village was home to more than 1,100 former slaves, including the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who spent a year there, on what was once the estate of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s family.
More on the historical significance of the village, from the Associated Press.