Founders of the Friends of the Freedmen’s Cemetery

Lillie Finklea (at left) and Louise Massoud (at right), founders of Friends of the Freedmen's Cemetery, celebrate after the September 6, 2014, dedication of the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial in Alexandria. In 1997, the two women founded a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving, commemorating, and researching a historic burial ground in Alexandria that had been set aside for Black refugees who had escaped enslavement during the Civil War. The nonprofit organization was pivotal in the creation of the memorial park.