The Talbot Avenue Bridge connects the historically Black neighborhood of Lyttonsville, Maryland, to what was once the white, restricted community of Silver Spring.
A plaque unveiled Thursday at the foot of the bridge honors an activist and community leader who fought to keep Montgomery County’s history of racial segregation from being forgotten.
“It means more to me and my family than I can easily say,” Charlotte Coffield’s daughter, Myra, said at the plaque’s dedication, attended by elected officials, residents and reporters.
In the future, the plaque will be embedded in the bridge itself.
The county said the bridge is a symbol of its “complex history,” a reminder of the days when Black residents of Lyttonsville knew neighboring Silver Spring was a “sundown” town and not safe for Black residents after dark.
Racially restrictive covenants — legal clauses that barred Black families from buying homes in certain neighborhoods — also prevented Black families from buying property in Silver Spring.
“We were allowed to work in the houses over here, but we weren’t allowed to own property or buy homes over here or to live over here at all,” Myra Coffield said.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racially restrictive covenants unenforceable. In 1967, Montgomery County enacted a law barring discrimination in housing based on race.
“I knew Charlotte for a long time. She was kind of, the epitome of ‘good trouble,'” County Executive Marc Elrich said, referring to the term often used by the late Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.
Charlotte Coffield worked to preserve the history and cultural heritage of African Americans in Montgomery County, particularly in Lyttonsville.
“My mother was born on Juneteenth,” she said. “Think about that. I mean, we were celebrating it as a holiday before everyone else did.”
The original Talbot Avenue Bridge, a steel and wooden structure that linked Lyttonsville and Silver Spring, was removed from the site for the Purple Line project. It will be installed at a park near the Lyttonsville Purple Line station.
Because of Coffield’s work, Maryland state Del. Jared Solomon said the new bridge “became a symbol of uniting communities, and I think the crowd here today is incredibly representative of that.”
“It’s really fitting that she spent the rest of her lifetime creating bridges for other people to cross both figuratively and literally,” Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando said.
Charlotte Coffield died in 2024 at age 91. Her daughter planned an outing for her mother’s last birthday.
“We could drive wherever she wanted to go. It’s no surprise where she chose,” Myra Coffield said. “She wanted to come here. We drove around the neighborhood, and we crossed this bridge, back and forth, and back and forth.”
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