Borders are funny things. Sometimes they are completely invisible, and yet you know you have crossed from one place to another place. Crossing into Mexico from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez or from San Ysidro to Tijuana, the border is obvious, even in the pre-911 world: there are gates, customs agents, the language changes. Even if there were no border guards or gates between Mexico and the United States, and there was no change from English to Spanish it would still be easy to tell the difference between the one place and the other because the poverty in Mexico is more apparent and more immediate. Houses are more ramshackle and buildings are more run down in the Mexican border towns than in the American border towns, an indication of the relative difference in living standards between the two nations. While there are plenty of wealthy Mexicans, few live near the border, and the majority of Mexicans still toil for what Americans would consider to be low wages.

        The only overt indication that I have crossed from Stratford into Bridgeport is the colorful sign welcoming me to Bridgeport, “Park City” as it styles itself, Bill Finch Mayor. The houses are similar to the ones I just passed in Stratford; there is a Dunkin Donuts, a Burger King, a gas station, even a local diner along this stretch of Boston Avenue (US1). Yet I am immediately aware of the fact that I am no longer in Stratford, because very few people look like me. The majority of the people on the street, in the shops, or driving in their cars are “black” or “Hispanic,” while only a few “white” people are to be seen.  It is amazing to me that one minute I am wandering through a working-class area in Stratford that is majority “white” according to the Census Bureau, and one minute later only 16% of the residents of the census district are “white” and 44% are “black,” merely because I crossed an invisible line. The further I walk into Bridgeport the more pronounced the racial differential becomes. Within a mile of entering Bridgeport the resident white population of the area through which I walk drops to 5% and at one point actually drops to 0%. Two and a half miles behind me in Stratford the resident population classified as white by the Census Bureau was 80% Two miles ahead of me in Fairfield, the white population is 90%! (1)

        In the course of my walk I have encountered this situation where the white population is in the minority only four times: in Roxbury, Massachusetts only two miles from my house, in South Providence, in New Haven, and here in Bridgeport. The only common denominator besides skin tone amongst these neighborhoods is that they are far and away the poorest neighborhoods through which I have passed in 280 or so miles of walking. And this brings me to the heart of my interest in the demographics of the post road: it has become increasingly obvious to me that for “race” we might as well substitute “class” when discussing areas with high minority populations. For if the election of Barack Obama has taught America any lessons at all, it is that the entire concept of classifying people by race is outmoded and insufficient to express the dynamic that is really under discussion in these conversations, apart from the few rednecks who still harbor dreams of the South rising again and blame the Thirteenth Amendment for their problems.

*****

        Races within the human species do not exist in a strictly scientific sense; that is, the genetic diversity among individuals within a race is often higher than that between people of different races. A typical Ethiopian is less closely related to a Nigerian than to a Greek and an Italian has more genetic similarity to a Tunisian than to a Belgian for example. My students often had a great deal of difficulty grasping this concept when I introduced it into my biology class, but to someone who grew up in Bermuda, the idea that race was a more fluid concept than the rigid barriers that are perceived to differentiate white from black was obvious from one observation even a young child could make: “Black” Bermudians are not very black. As a child I went to Dellwood Primary School in Hamilton, Bermuda with children of all backgrounds. Among the students were many recent immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados, and other islands in the Caribbean (Bermuda is NOT in the Caribbean: look it up!). The common denominator among these children was that they were obviously much darker than what were referred to by both black and white as Black Bermudians.  It took me a while, but I eventually hit upon an explanation for this phenomenon: most Black Bermudians must have some “white” ancestors.

        Once I sorted that out I soon made another observation: “White” Bermudians are darker than “white” people who immigrated to the Island. An English kid named Stephen arrived in the Bermudian equivalent of my third grade class, and he was noticeable for his extremely pallid complexion (It should come as no surprise that he was referred to as Casper). In fact many of the kids from non-Bermudian families, especially from England, were much whiter than the White Bermudians like me. And my family tree has “English” ancestors straight down the line, including my grandmother who was from Yorkshire. Conclusion number 2: either White Bermudians tan better or White Bermudians often have “black” ancestors.  This conclusion I suspect is somewhat more controversial to those at whom it is directed as many people find it hard to believe that people who are obviously “white” can have “black” ancestors. How could this have happened, given that the prevailing power structure in colonial Bermuda favored white men over black women for example?

        I can only speak for my family, but one hypothesis is that there was an admixture of “Indian” blood from Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century.  My grandfather had what you might call a “swarthy” complexion even though he was a prominent Bermudian at a time when Black Bermudians were actively discriminated against.  The story goes that my grandfather’s grandmother on his mother’s side was a very young MicMac Indian who married an older white man in Nova Scotia, thus the darker skin on my grandfather’s side. There is some evidence for this in the genealogical research I have done.

        The previous hypothesis might be true (and I have previously discussed the remarkable connection between Pequots and Bermudians), but I also have discovered some evidence of miscegenation in eighteenth-century Bermuda among one or more of my ancestors that amazingly went uncommented upon UNTIL the (white) father tried to baptize his children in a white church, at which point he was banished to England.  I will spare you the details, but this is a case that occurred in a time and place when races were forcibly separated: how many cases passed under the noses of the authorities and hence went unmentioned in the annals of Bermuda? How many “mulattos” or “quadroons” or “octaroons” as they were styled in colonial America “passed” for white? How many even lost track of the fact that their ancestral great-great-great-great-grand-mother might have been one of the slaves in the family, such as the slaves my family owned in the early nineteenth century, for which my great-great-great-great-grandfather was compensated upon emancipation in 1834?

*****

        I mention all this to make the point that I might be part Indian or part black, but in the eyes of the people I pass on the street in Bridgeport I am a white man and a pretty well off one at that if my LLBean hiking boots and winter jacket are anything to go by.  Similarly, to me the people I pass on the streets of Bridgeport are black and “Hispanic,” even though many are surely not “100%” black or Mayan or even Spanish for that matter. The fact that we even differentiate between white, black, Hispanic, and Asian (and “Other” for those who refuse to place themselves in these confining categories-- Isn’t that what the President is?) two “races,” one geographical location, and one “ethnicity” demonstrates the absurdity of these categories.  Surely a Pakistani immigrant living in New York does not feel he is in the same cultural or racial group as a Korean immigrant living in Los Angeles? Yet they are both technically Asian as is my Iraqi barber, who works with a Moroccan (is he Black? He doesn’t look black, but he is from Africa so...), with whom he communicates in Arabic.

        What race really represents on the whole is class. Bridgeport is poor, there is no nice way to say that. Sure there are sections that are pleasant and even “nice” to walk through, but overall when I head into a neighborhood where the population is majority minority I am almost never walking through an area filled with bookstores and cafes, or restaurants serving fusion cuisine or bizarre martinis. No, I am walking through an area where I want to keep my iPhone in my pocket and not be too ostentatious. There are lots of “Check-Cashing” facilities and a noticeable dearth of high end retail.  Regardless of the color of people’s skins I am much better off than most of the people I pass, and that is the primary source of the discomfort I feel.

        The truth is the white people I encounter on the street scare me a hell of a lot more than other people because my first thought is “why are they here? they must be drug addicts and they might rob me for some drug money! Don’t make eye contact--keep walking!” Sad to say but true. I discriminate against white people more than black or Hispanic people because somehow I feel they should not be in the position in which they find themselves, and hence there must be something wrong with them.

        I live in Boston, I take the T all the time, and the racial makeup on the Orange Line is no different than it is on Boston Avenue in Bridgeport--lots of people of different skin colors and backgrounds all mixed together on the subway cars--and I do not think twice about it.  But I am on home turf in Boston so there is a comfort level that is lacking when traveling on a road you have never traveled, through an unfamiliar, poor neighborhood in a strange city. Who knows whether the next corner is the homicide ground zero of Connecticut, and I might be an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire? These kind of crazy thoughts mount in my mind as I head deeper into the middle of Bridgeport and the surroundings become bleaker. There is a closed GE factory on my right and some abandoned houses on my left. It is cold and there are not too many people about in this area just shy of the Old Mill Green. Oh well, I said I was walking the whole thing good or bad, so just keep going.

        And the longer I walk the more relaxed I become because I realize of course that nobody gives a damn about me! Most people who pass me are just living their lives and are not even giving me a second glance. One or two people even say ‘good morning’ to me. On the corner of East Main and Boston Avenue at the northern end of the Old Mill Green I encounter a man on this cold and windy morning collecting money from passing vehicles for the families of homicide victims.  I throw a couple of dollars into his collection basket and engage in a short conversation during which he tells me that the problem is like a disease: he seems to think that a vicious cycle has spiraled out of control as kids take revenge for previous killings which leads to even more killing. He is statistically on firm ground as I show below.  His aim in collecting money at this corner is to provide a little comfort for the families of victims (so he tells me) and perhaps to help defray their funeral expenses.

*****

        When you look at the demographics of homicides in cities like Bridgeport it is hard to disagree with the notion that a virus is sweeping through these communities wiping out the young males with alarming efficiency. Homicide is far and away the biggest cause of death for black and Hispanic males under the age of 35 in America. Black males aged 15-34 are murdered at 15 times the rate of the nation as a whole, and though only about 5% of the population, they make up more than 40% of the homicide victims in the country! These are shocking statistics but a quick perusal of any web site which shows a homicide map, such as the Boston Globe or New York Times will show that they are accurate. According to the FBI, the vast majority of homicide victims are killed intraracially, that is, black kids are essentially killing each other. (2)

        In fact, as I continue my walk I reflect that I am actually much less likely to be a victim of homicide than most of the young people I see around me. (3) The most that would probably happen to me would be to lose my iPhone, which is easily replaced and not integral to my ability to live (I can function without my iPhone, despite what some commentators on this blog have suggested!).  In any event, I am not only here to observe the streets of today I am also interested in describing evidence of the past and to continue to track the route of the old post road, and it turns out that there is surprisingly quite a bit of evidence of the road in Bridgeport despite the trauma the area has suffered.

        Bridgeport was originally part of Stratford as I mentioned in the last entry.  It was not until the early nineteenth century that Bridgeport became a town and then a city of its own. According to Samuel Orcutt, the population of Bridgeport in 1810 was 550; by 1840 the population had increased to 4570 inhabitants, and by 1880 the town held 29,153 citizens.  The population peaked in 1950 at 158,709 before beginning a gradual decline to approximately 138,000 residents today.  Bridgeport is the largest city in Connecticut and the chief metropolis of the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is essentially the entirety of Fairfield County, with a population of roughly 900,000. The decline of Bridgeport is clearly seen by comparing the relative population of Bridgeport to the population of Fairfield County; in 1950 Bridgeport made up 32% of the total 500,000 people in the county. By 2005 the city of Bridgeport constituted only 15% of the 900,000 people in Fairfield County; in other words, Bridgeport had become half as big as it was in relation to Fairfield County in half a century.(4)

        Why did Bridgeport become the main city of Connecticut for so many years? The city was a major manufacturing center beginning in the early nineteenth century, first in ship-building and moving on eventually to include companies such as General Electric, Warner Brothers Corset Company, Columbia Records, Remington UMC, and the Frisbee Pie Company.(5)  Hence waves of immigrants searching for work poured into the city, including blacks from the South in the early twentieth century.

       Samuel Orcutt describes Bridgeport in 1886 in the following glowing terms: “Another feature of the this city is the large number of buildings of extensive manufactures; but these structures are all new and of elegant proportions and styles so that they ornament rather than detract from the picturesqueness and beauty of the city.”(6)  Unfortunately the exodus of manufacturing jobs that continues unabated today began to affect Bridgeport shortly after World War II, and today the hulking ruins of these “elegant” buildings litter the landscape, giving the city the appearance at times of a victim of an aerial bombardment.  I pass the GE factory after a few minutes in Bridgeport; it is fenced in, closed, and falling apart, and it sits right on Boston Avenue, the main road through the city so it is not hard to see.

*****

        Immigrants continue to pour into Bridgeport and now Hispanics constitute at least a third of the population of the city. Some sections, including the area around the Old Mill Green, are over 75% Hispanic. After I cross into Bridgeport from Stratford I soon head up a steep hill through a largely African-American neighborhood. At the top of the hill I get a sweeping view of the city in the river valley below (see photo above).  Then I descend into a level area, passing the aforementioned GE plant before reaching the area still called Old Mill Green.  An old mill did once grace the creek that leads away from Stillman pond. At this point the road turns to the northwest and splits, with the northbound traffic flanking one side of the large green space and southbound traffic on the other side. The Old Mill Green today is forlorn and somewhat empty, although in the eighteenth century Orcutt tells us it was a flourishing and somewhat aristocratic settlement. (7) The Green is quite wide and there are a few trees lining it on both sides, but overall it is just a patch of green in an otherwise bleak area.  Christopher Colles has several “large trees” marked on his map of the area but these are not so big as to be more than two centuries old.

        According to Colles’s map the mile 70 marker is found about halfway between the mill creek and the Pequennock River, where the road turns sharply southwest. Henry Sage found a milestone on the Old Mill Green in the 1920s, and I look for it as I pass through the area and find it exactly where it is supposed to be. This stone is quite large, almost five feet high, and somebody has helpfully painted the etched area in black making the stone easy to read: “17 Miles to NH.”

        A bridge was built over the Pequennock River at a narrow point formerly forded by those following the road west to New York. This bridge was built in 1736 when the town voted to “endeavor that a cart bridge be built over Pequonnock river in the Grand Country Road at the town’s charge.”(8)  This road was also known as “King’s Highway” and was called such into the time Orcutt published his history of the area when he made sarcastic comments about the impending decision to change the name  of the road: “It has been known as the Old King’s Highway just two hundred years, but is in danger of losing its monarchical title for one more in harmony with the government of the country in which it is located.”(9)  Today the road is known as North Avenue after it crosses the Pequennock River, a name not quite as evocative as Old King’s Highway, the name the road reclaims when it crosses the line into Fairfield.

        Colles’s map shows the road forming a “peak” heading northwest from Stratford to the Pequonnock River Bridge, then turning sharply southwest as it heads towards Fairfield. Today Boston Avenue and North Avenue, both part of US1, do exactly the same thing. The sidewalk around the unimpressive little river is falling apart. I pass a strip joint called “Scruples” and a pawn shop. The area is devoid of residences and composed primarily of junk yards, auto body shops, and the aforementioned strip clubs (I pass at least two) and pawn shops. The fact that it is about 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind is howling at least 20-30 miles per hour in my face doesn’t make the scene any less bleak. I cross under a highway heading into downtown (Route 8) and reach the intersection with Main Street, where the neighborhood becomes more residential and, surprisingly, more pleasant.  In fact it gets more and more pleasant as I continue along North Avenue, through what appears to be a predominantly Latino area. Again, it is not a great area, but it is not as bad as I had envisioned.  I pass “Tom Thumb Florist,” which reminds me that Bridgeport was also the hometown of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and of P.T. Barnum, the flamboyant nineteenth-century “showman” who served as mayor of Bridgeport and is often credited with saying “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

        Mile 69 on Colles’s map is shown just past the Pequonnock River, while number 68 is just past Main Street. No stones exist today to mark the spots, but my modern map shows that Colles is on target as the distances add up.  As the street curves slightly away I realize that the road itself is not so bad as it is only a moderately trafficked two-lane road and not the standard four-lane divided highway that is the normal state of US1.  Number 1618 North Avenue is actually a nice old Victorian house, and as I continue on towards Fairfield the residential architecture becomes more and more elaborate, although most houses still need work.    

        After I cross Park Avenue I am in what was called Stratfield as early as 1700. This neighborhood technically is in what was once East Fairfield but is called Old Fairfield on Colles’s map. George Washington mentions the area in his entry for October 17th, 1789: “A little after sun-rise we left Fairfield and passing through Et. Fairfield breakfasted at Stratford, wch is ten miles from Fairfield.  The Road between these two places is not on the whole bad (for this country)-in some places very gd., especially through Et. Fairfield, wch. is in a plain, and free from stone.  There are two decent looking Churches in this place, though small...” (10) Nobody else mentions the area, but a map of Connecticut in 1766 shows a church in the area, which presumably corresponds to at least one of Washington’s two churches. Colles’s map shows both a “Presbyterian” church and an Episcopal church in the area and a tavern as well run by a “Nichols.”  There is still today a United Church of Christ in roughly the spot Colles indicates a church was located in 1789. Nearby on the south side of the street is another New Haven Milestone, again described by Sage in 1951. This one has an “F” inscribed at the top of the stone followed by the words “20 miles to NH.” Of the letter “F” Sage comments, “I have been told relates to Benjamin Franklin. If so, it is the only milestone in the state which bears in its marking any reference to the Post Master General of the Colonies.” (11)  I don’t think he buys it.

        The houses around the last few blocks into Fairfield are very nice old Victorians, well kept and large. On the left I reach a large garden cemetery called Mountain Grove Cemetery. The name Mary Barnum Reade is inscribed on the gate, which makes me think Barnum may have had some role in the establishment of the cemetery.(12) The northern boundary of the cemetery is North Avenue, and the western boundary is the Uncoway River, which also marks the boundary between Fairfield and Bridgeport, thus I follow the cemetery fence to the Fairfield line and cross into the much wealthier (read whiter) town.

        Further research on Bridgeport after the fact indicates that the truly rough parts of Bridgeport are a bit further south of the old King’s Highway, mainly in the housing projects that line the area where I-95 and the train tracks cut through the heart of Bridgeport. Perhaps that is why this walk did not seem quite as bad as I had anticipated based upon the reputation the city has. I found the town to be a little run down but not a complete wasteland. Perhaps the mere fact that it is in an area that will only grow over time will bring back a more stable population of wealthier people who will contribute to the tax base and help pull Bridgeport back up to some level of equality with its wealthy neighbors. Orcutt may not recognize the town today, although the Green is still there, two of the old milestones still survive, and the town still sits in the same lovely location on Long Island Sound that attracted people in the first place.  Then maybe the “substantial facts” will help regenerate the “prosperous city” of yore. Today the facts tell a different story.