VIDEO: Abolitionist Place: A piece of African-American history in Brooklyn
Overshadowed by the relentless movement of the Fulton Mall District, a small street tries to survive in the memory of Brooklynites by keeping the history of the anti-slavery movement and its leaders who led hundreds of slaves to freedom using their houses on the block.
After various studies, historians and conservationists have agreed that the houses on Duffield Street may have served stations on the Underground Railroad, a network of underground tunnels that long ago connected the routes by which 100,000 slaves escaped from the South before the Civil War.
In 2007, the city gave Duffield Street an alternate name in honor of past residents’ antislavery work: Abolitionist Place.