African Americans lived, worked, built, and died in the Valley. Stories centered in what is today Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park spread across the Valley encompassing the lives of many.
Their imprint upon the region’s history has only recently garnered historians’ attention. Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park engages emerging scholarship that considers African American life in the Shenandoah Valley across three centuries. Without the perspectives and experiences of enslaved and free blacks, the Great Valley’s narrative remains incomplete.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
