by Andy Piascik For five days in the summer of 1936, Bridgeport’s Park Theatre played host to one of the most innovative and talked-about theater productions of that era: the Federal Theatre Project’s staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with an all-black cast, as directed by Orson Welles ...
By Michelle Black Smith On July 6, 1970, under the agency leadership of Charles B. Tisdale, the A.B.C.D. Cultural Arts Center (hereafter Art Center) welcomed Bridgeport youth and young adults to explore a variety of creative expression at an office building in downtown Bridgeport. Free of ...
By Mary K. Witkowski Editor: Ann Marie Virzi Alice Whiting Farrar had many passions: music, church, education and above all, her family and their home on Bridgeport's East End. Skills she learned at a young age, especially sewing,served her well as a mother running a household with ...
by Michelle Black Smith In 1977, a dedicated group of African American teachers decided to record the history of Black Bridgeporters in the residents’ own words. The Afro-American Education Association (hereafter AAEA) petitioned the CT Humanities Council for funds and technical support. The introduction to the ...
REMEMBERING BRIDGEPORT PHYSICIAN ALLEN C. BRADLEY, 1875-1945 On February 1, 2024, I attended a program at the New Haven Museum celebrating Black History Month and the tenth anniversary of a book that I had contributed to, African American Connecticut Explored. The book is a compilation and ...
By Britney Murphy On December 22, 1939, Father Stephen J. Panik, proudly addressed the audience attending the groundbreaking ceremony for Bridgeport’s first public housing project. The erection of what would become Yellow Mill Village was the culmination of years of hard work on the part of ...
Three famous inventors – Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim and Thomas Edison – owe their successes, in part, to a young, African-American inventor who lived on Bridgeport’s South End, among a rich population of Irish, African-American, Hungarian and other ethnic groups. Lewis Latimer lived on Whiting ...
Maisa Tisdale, President of the Mary and Eliza Freeman Center for History and Community, and Keith Stokes, Vice President of the 1696 Heritage Group, are interviewed by Lucy Nalpathanchil about Bridgeport's Little Liberia, a community that was settled by African and Native Americans in the ...
By Mary Witkowski In these days of analyzing confusing elections and examining consequential figures in our past, people who cleared a path for our future stand out. Margaret E. Morton had an extraordinary career in Connecticut politics that was sparked by her role in a Bridgeport ...
By: Mary K. Witkowski, Bridgeport City Historian The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. visited Bridgeport at least five times. In March of 1961, King delivered the Frank Jacoby lecture for the. University of Bridgeport. Due to the large crowd, the lecture was held at the Klein Memorial Auditorium. ...
By: Charles Brilvitch A community of “free people of color” began to coalesce around the lower reaches of Bridgeport Harbor the same year (1821) that Bridgeport itself came into being. Comprised of freed blacks born in Connecticut, runaway enslaved persons from southern states, and remnants of ...
Many Bridgeport residents have strong ties to the farming community in Alabama known as Gee's Bend. Gee's Bend was part of a larger plantation on the Alabama River that came into existence around 1830. After the Civil War, when the former slaves were given the option ...
By Stephen Thornton On stage at Bridgeport’s Park Theater in the fall of 1944 stood “Republico, The Little Mechanical Man.” He was an empty-headed dummy that the stage barker described as “handy, dandy, and works like a whiz.” With his slick hair and neat mustache, the ...
By Michelle Black-Smith In the spring of 2018, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with three unique, creative, and insightful people. These individuals inhabit all four spaces – Black, Woman, Artist, Bridgeport Native – and they do so with great pride, expression and articulation ...
By Chelsea Gazillo Have you ever wondered why some neighborhoods in Bridgeport have more wealth than others? The disparity between the wealth held by residents of different neighborhoods in Bridgeport – often correlated with the racial composition of each neighborhood – were not created by chance. ...
By Mary K. Witkowski, Editor: Ann Marie Virzi In her 99 years on earth, Viola Bridgeforth, born in 1897, lived through many if not most of the profound changes that African-Americans and women in general experienced in the 20th century. Through all the changes, Viola Bridgeforth ...
