Tilbury House Publishers, 2006
Paperback, 448 pages, $35
The Large Contributions of One Percent
This new account of more than three centuries of black history in Maine not only begs the question, Why hasn’t this been done before? but answers it — generously, unforgettably, and often poignantly.
Indeed, the authors’ accomplishment is remarkable considering that, except for Malaga Island in Phippsburg, printed historic information is sparse and scattered throughout the state, and Maine’s black population has never exceeded one percent of its total, overwhelmingly white population.
Yet from enslavement and freedom, from docks and farms, from kitchens and colleges, from pulpits and the State House, black citizens have played pivotal roles in shaping Maine’s society and culture. They not only persevered with quiet, unrecognized courage but also helped to build this state and effected positive social and political changes despite unimaginable obstacles.
Their contributions — long ignored or unacknowledged — lie within this chronicle, which illuminates the lives and work of black people in the maritime trades and fishing, abolitionism, religion, the underground railroad, education, sports, art, law, science, politics, transportation, commerce, civil rights and military service.
Amid the text and 240 photographs, meet Phebe Ann Jacobs (1785-1850), born in slavery and owned by Mrs. Maria Malleville Allen, the wife of a Bowdoin College president. A highly respected Christian whose narrative was published after her death, Jacobs’s pallbearers included senior faculty members and a former Maine governor.
Meet John Nichols (1851-1930) who describes his frightening escape from a southern plantation during the Civil War, his work for the Union Army, and his postwar arrival in Lewiston with a group of ex-slaves who were promised safe passage north and farm work.
Meet Macon B. Allen (1816-1894) and James A. Healy (1830-1900). Allen became the first black attorney in the U.S. following his admission to the Cumberland County Bar in 1844. Healy, who traveled 3,000 miles on horseback and by canoe to confirm 4,000 Maine children, was the first black Roman Catholic priest and bishop in the nation.
And meet the mariners — men and boys, free and enslaved — who arrived here from the West Indies, Africa and the Caribbean and helped to build Maine’s fishing, shipbuilding, transportation, and international trade industries from colonial times. At one time 25 percent of mariners along the Atlantic coast were black, according to one historian.
More recent contributions of black people, especially in the last century, are as moving significant, and far-reaching as those of their predecessors. Faced with blatant and subtle racial discrimination, they battled job, income, promotion and housing obstacles. Again, they persevered and won political prominence, achieved groundbreaking legal remedies such as the passage of Maine’s Fair Housing Act before Congress adopted the federal bill, and influenced national laws and policies.
In 1952, Portland High School senior Beverly Dodge Bowens ignited the partial desegregation of a Washington, D.C., hotel.
Concern for returning World War II veterans who couldn’t find jobs inspired James A. Johnson (1901-1974), a nationally-recognized inventor, author and educator, to establish Maine’s Vocational Technical Institute. Today it’s known as Southern Maine Community College.
Former two-time president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Portland, Gerald E. Talbot, was the first black person elected to the Maine Legislature and the first black speaker pro tem in its House of Representatives. Among his legislative accomplishments, Talbot changed maps and Maine’s social conscience in 1977 by winning passage of a law to remove the n-word from geographic places statewide.
In addition to working tirelessly as an educator of Maine’s black history, Talbot donated the largest collection of black memorabilia to the University of Southern Maine, which launched its growing African American collection.
An eighth-generation Mainer and iconic civil rights leader, Talbot authored and edited this astounding chronicle with H. H. Price, a writer and researcher who documented Maine’s participation in the Underground Railroad.
In that vein, Price and Talbot are the “conductors” of this extraordinary work, which includes contributions from 42 writers and covers significant events such as emancipation, visits by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., the championship fight between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston in Lewiston, civil rights marches and the brutal 1912 eviction at Malaga Island.
While there is no shortage of printed historic material concerning the only state-sponsored eviction in Maine history of the black, white and bi-racial families who settled Malaga in the mid-1800s, much that has been written — then and now — suffers from fictionalization. On grounds that this tragic story already suffers from too much fiction, I would prefer to see a fact-only account in this book.
The Malaga story is largely factual, but assertions or speculations, for example, that all blacks were of African descent, that they were electing kings at the turn of the 20th century (the term “king” was used on several all-white Maine islands to refer to the community’s non-elected leader), and that Malaga was named in honor of Benjamin Dalling (who owned and lived on Horse (now Harbor) Island in the late 1700s) detract from an otherwise excellent piece by contributing writer Allen Breed.
In another section of the book, a different author incorrectly refers to Benjamin Dalling or Darling “of Malaga Island”; neither he nor his children lived there.
Still, this book will be a rich source of information and a springboard for researchers, teachers, students and historians who are interested in exploring Maine’s black history.
A resource list, bibliography, genealogies and appendices that contain census data, a timeline, news articles and lists of black mariners, preachers, teachers, soldiers, and more accompany the stories and photos.
Price and Talbot offer a trip through a little known line of history and, thankfully, introduce their passengers to unforgettable people along the way.