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In the courtyard of the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights is a statue of its first minister Henry Ward Beecher, next to a plaque of Abraham Lincoln who worshipped at the church twice in 1860. Both have been celebrated for their integral roles in the abolition of slavery.

But there are many others in Brooklyn who were part of the antislavery movement. A new project is being put together to recognize their contributions.

"I think it's about time that the world if not just New York City beings to see the important contribution that Brooklyn made to the abolition of slavery, how involved residents of Brooklyn were in that whole movement and the different kinds of people who were involved," said Weeksville Heritage Center Executive Director Pamela Green.

"There were many, many people running newspapers, working in schools, setting up what were called then the colored schools in Brooklyn because the African-American students were not allowed to be in the white schools at some point," Brooklyn Historical Society President Deborah Schwartz.

The project is called "In Pursuit of Freedom" and is being put together by the Brooklyn Historical Society, along with Weeksville Heritage Center and Irondale Ensemble Project. It will include historic site markers for walking tours and archival materials that set the tone of the time, including a rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln.

"Some of the highlights are a huge cache of antislavery pamphlets from this time that were produced largely in the churches," Schwartz said. "There were sermons being created all the time and being published so that they had a large public forum and those we have hundreds of hundreds of those that we'll use to tell a story."

The group is doing research now on all of that material, to get the project underway. It's received several grants from the city and the federal government totalling $3 million.

"I hope that we are able to find the resources to take this right on up to the 21st century to follow the continuum," Green said.

The Brooklyn Historical Society expects the first phases of the project to be in place in about a year.