# Understanding the RESTORE Act: Preserving African-American Freedom Settlements

The RESTORE Act creates a new federal program dedicated to identifying, researching, preserving, and celebrating Freedom Settlements—communities founded by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War. These settlements, also known as Freedmen's Settlements, Freedom Colonies, or Black Towns, represent a remarkable but largely forgotten chapter of American history where Black families built self-sufficient communities to escape racial violence and discrimination.

Between 1866 and 1930, over 200 of these settlements were established across the country, from Nicodemus, Kansas to Eatonville, Florida. They were built around schools and churches, creating safe spaces where African Americans could own land, educate their children, and build wealth—opportunities denied to them under slavery and Jim Crow laws. However, many of these communities were destroyed by racial violence, deliberately excluded from infrastructure like railroads and water systems, or simply forgotten as history was written by others. Today, some survive but struggle with underdevelopment and lack of resources, while others exist mainly in community memory and oral histories.

The bill establishes a National Freedom Settlements Preservation Program within the National Park Service, funded at $3 million per year through 2031. The program will award grants to property owners, local governments, and community organizations to identify these settlements, conduct research, restore historic sites, develop educational programs, and build local capacity to maintain these important places. The bill also creates an advisory committee composed of descendants of settlement residents and historians to guide the program's work. Importantly, the bill protects private property rights—participation is entirely voluntary, and property owners must consent before their land can be included in the program.

This bill essentially recognizes that these communities deserve the same historical attention and federal support given to other significant American heritage sites, while ensuring that communities themselves—particularly descendants of the original settlers—have a voice in how their history is preserved and told.