Kaifa Dennis Sought Info About a Notable Ancestor in Rutland He Found a New Home sevendaysvt.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sevendaysvt.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rutland City Buildings mural by Persi Narvaez in downtown Rutland Driving to Rutland recently, I was taken aback to realize I hadn t been there in 30 years. Back then, I was a sportswriter covering high school football, and Mount St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic high school in Rutland, was a football powerhouse. I made the trip down to write about the Mounties and their hometown rivals, the Rutland Red Raiders (now called the Ravens). My view of the city was from the sidelines, literally. But teams fortunes change, as do newspaper beats, and I stopped going to Rutland. That changed in early May, when my daughter and I drove 65 miles south on Route 7 for a road trip to Rutland. With a population of roughly 15,000 people, it s the biggest city in Vermont outside of Chittenden County. Its major crossroads of routes 4 and 7, marked by Starbucks, CVS and Burger King, could be Anywhere, USA.
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Rutland, Vermont, celebrated a new public sculpture Thursday that honors a trailblazer in higher education.
The bust of Martin Henry Freeman was installed late last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant the sculpture’s dedication had to be delayed until now. Download our mobile app for iOS or Android to get alerts for local breaking news and weather.
Martin Henry Freeman was born in Rutland 195 years ago. His grandfather earned his freedom from slavery by fighting in the Revolutionary War.
According to organizers of the Downtown Rutland Sculpture Trail, Freeman was among the very first Black students to go to college in Vermont. He went on to become a leading abolitionist and even the first Black man to lead a college in the United States as president before the Civil War.
Sculpture honors 1st Black president of U.S. College Sculpture honors 1st Black president of U.S. College
The first Black president of an American college is being honored with a sculpture installed in the Vermont city where …
A sculpture of Martin Henry Freeman, the first Black college president in the United States, is on display on the sculpture trail in downtown Rutland, Vt., where he was born in 1826. Mr. Freeman, an 1849 graduate of Middlebury College, became president in 1856 of Allegheny Institute, which later became Avery College, in Pittsburgh. Photo by Lisa Rathke/Associated Press
RUTLAND, Vt. – The first Black president of an American college is being honored with a sculpture installed in the Vermont city where he was born in 1826.