Behind Main Street and Elm Street stood an African-American neighborhood whose buildings were assigned half-number street addresses. Its residents made up most of Westport's African-American population, including many descended from people enslaved by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European settlers. After the Great Migration began in the 1920s, additional African Americans settled in Westport and often worked in service jobs for affluent residents as maids, cooks, gardeners, drivers, and groomsmen. Many people in the area lived at 22½ Main Street, later 28 Main Street, which served as the neighborhood's center and was associated with a grocer, a barbershop, Antioch Baptist Church, and other community institutions. In December 1949, community members petitioned the Representative Town Meeting to be considered for the town's new affordable housing, but were rebuffed. In January, a local newspaper warned of great loss of life if fire struck the slum housing. Eight days later, a fire broke out in the part of 22½ Main Street used for the church. All residents escaped after Robert Hall raised the alarm and tried to douse the flames himself, but most of the structure and nearly all of the residents' possessions were destroyed. Arson was suspected, yet no investigation followed. Some families remained for several months in the unburned part of the building while seeking other housing in town, but in the end nearly all who had lived in the community left Westport.