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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.
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.
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.
The larger-than-life marble bust of scholar Martin Henry Freeman sits on a stack of books in a downtown square as part of the Rutland Sculpture Trail.
âItâs a very soft, gentle portrayal of Martin Freeman,â said Al Wakefield, one of the sponsors of the piece that was installed in November. âI donât know how many people remember either through historical writings what kind of person he was, but heâs depicted as a very gentle, kind, literary, artsy kind of a guy.â