Watch: Bringing Freedom – Bridgeport’s Historic Underground Railroad Destination, Little Liberia

Homegrown and becoming known, Bridgeport’s Reginald David is the community engagement reporter for OIB media partner Connecticut Mirror “bridging the information gap between Bridgeport residents and the policies and decisions that shape our daily lives.”

Beaming Bridgeport news locally and across the state, David textures present-day city news with  historical insight, one of his latest pieces focusing on The Mary & Eliza Freeman Houses in the South End that made up part of Little Liberia, a key stop on the Underground Railroad chronicled by abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

See video about the homes featuring preservation leader Maisa Tisdale.

Little Liberia (known as Ethiope, then Liberia in the 1800s) was a seafaring community of free people of color. It boasted a luxurious seaside resort hotel for wealthy Blacks (cited in a letter to Frederick Douglass), Bridgeport’s first free lending library, a school for colored children, businesses, fraternal organizations, and churches. Of about 36 structures that comprised Little Liberia, only the Freeman Houses survive on original foundations. Mary Freeman (1815–1883) and Eliza Freeman (1805- 1862) were accomplished business women. When Mary Freeman died, the only Bridgeporter of greater wealth was legendary showman P.T. Barnum. The Freeman Houses are listed on the National Register of Historic Places for their significance to African Americans and Women.

“In Bridgeport the blacks may reign. This, then, is the spot for respectable colored people. Let them never play the tail part anywhere, when they can play the head.”
– Correspondent, Ethiop
Frederick Douglass’ Paper, September 1, 1854