Longtime Freetown Village director retires

Ophelia Wellington, founding director of Freetown Village Living History Museum, will be retiring this summer after 42 years of advancing a transformative and creative concept of educating the public about African American history in Indiana. Combining her profession as an educator and sharing information through the performing arts, Wellington created a living history museum without walls that sent actors and singers across Indiana and into surrounding states portraying characters from the town of Freetown Village. These actors, trained and dressed in time-appropriate costumes, presented experiences from the 1870 period about the villagers representing the composite lives and stories of nearly 3,000 African Americans who lived on the west side of Indianapolis in 1870. This post-Civil War period encapsulated African Americans who migrated north to create a new hope-filled life. Freetown Village also represents over 60+ predominately African American settlements scattered throughout Indiana during the 1800s that became the home of others leaving the South. By 1997, Freetown Village expanded to include more contemporary issues in African American life and culture that reflect different time periods to provide a more expansive story. & Through storytelling, folk crafts, heritage workshops, special events and a signature summer day camp, Indiana’s African American history...