This was the childhood home of Freedom Riders Joy Reagon and her brother, Cordell Hull Reagon. Joy married fellow Freedom Rider Frederick Leonard and they lived in the house together from their wedding until they moved to Detroit. Cordell Hull Reagon was encouraged by Pete Seeger to use his beautiful singing voice for the Movement and Reagon founded the quartet, the Freedom Singers, which included his first wife, Bernice Johnson Reagon. The house stayed in the family until 2000, when Joy and Cordell’s mother passed away.
The house appears to be well cared for, but it is a small one-family home on a street where its neighbors are either the row of new townhomes across the way or the ultra-modern, high-six-figure four-square a few houses down. There is nothing on-site indicating the significance of this house and some visible alterations might make its preservation more challenging.
