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A Snapshot Of Black History in the
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1893, Escaping to Canada through the underground railroad. |
1749 Portland's estimated population of 2,367 included 21 black slaves.
1764 The territory known as Maine has 23,686 whites and 322 black residents most of whom are slaves.
1776 Several blacks from Maine fight in the Revolutionary War. Years later, black Revolutionary War veterans are buried in Portland's Eastern Cemetery in plots segregated from white graves.
1783 Slavery ends in Maine and Massachusetts with a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision.
1790 The first U.S. Census lists 27 free blacks heading families totaling 100 members.
1800's The Abyssinian Church (Congregational) is built in response to treatment black families were receiving in Portland's churches. From 1829 to 1857, the church also ran a school for African Americans taught by women from the church who also organized a temperance society and a sewing circle. One of the few buildings in this area to survive the great fire of July 4, 1866, the church closed in 1917 soon after the Green Memorial A. M. E. Zion Church was opened.
1833-1834 Antislavery groups organize in towns such as Hallowell, and the Maine Antislavery Society is organized.
1841 Blacks organize the Maine and New Hampshire Historical and Agricultural Society to examine their concerns about education, temperance, the responsibility of the free Negro to the slave, and future employment. Their first convention is held in Portland.
1844 Macon B. Allen of Portland is admitted to the bar as an attorney. The Brunswicker newspaper speculated that Allen was the first black in the country to become a lawyer.
1850's The Underground Railroad helps escaped slaves pass through Maine to freedom in Canada. Slaves generally came to Portland, and used escape routes that included the Grand Trunk train line to Montreal, ships to New Brunswick or England, and a northwest trek that rounded Sebago Lake, passed through Bridgton and continued through New Hampshire and into Vermont. Safe-houses where the fugitives could sleep or rest were found in various communities, including Brewer, Palmyra, and in Portland.
1856 Portland closes its segregated school for black students and integrates them into the public school system because there are too few African American children to justify a separate school.
1875 James A. Healy becomes America's first black Roman Catholic bishop when he is consecrated in Portland. He served as bishop to Maine's Catholics including 300 who are African American until his death in 1900
1883 Maine rescinds the state law against interracial marriage.
1898 November 26th. The SS Portland sinks en route to Portland. The crew includes nineteen black men.
1900 Marion Thompson Osborne becomes the first African American woman to graduate from Colby College.
1909 Stephen Spottswood, living in Freeport, Maine, would grow up to become the chairman of the National Board of the NAACP.
1912 The state of Maine unilaterally evicts the racially mixed population of Malaga Island near Phippsburg. Although the settlement had existed since the late 1700's, when freed and escaped slaves began living there, many local white residents considered the 50 islanders an eyesore and a disgrace at a time when tourism was becoming important.
1920 The constitution of Maine gave all male citizens the right to vote and the right to an education regardless of race.
1940's Local blacks organize the Colored Community Center for Servicemen, a recreation center for black servicemen. About 1,000 soldiers visit the center every month. "There is no open segregation in this city, but the Colored Community Center is the only recreational facility of its type operated by Negroes, principally for Negroes," David Dickson, the center's president, wrote in 1943.
1945 Black and white Bangor-area residents form the Penobscot Interracial Forum. They held events that celebrate African-American history, oppose racial discrimination and protest racial insensitivity like that found in local "minstrel" shows. The group breaks up in the 1950's in the face of McCarthyism.
1947 Black residents of greater Portland establish the Portland branch of the NAACP. Clarence Roberts was the President.
1950 Ernest Butler becomes the first African American to be elected to public office in Maine when he is voted onto the Board of Selectmen in Frankfort.
1959 After lobbying by a civil rights group called the Maine Equal Opportunities Committee, the state Legislature approves the Public Accommodations Bill, a law banning discrimination based on race, religion and ancestry in public accommodations.
1961 The NAACP establishes branches in Lewiston and Brunswick.
1962 NAACP began a statewide campaign for a fair housing bill. In the 1960's, the Maine Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights documented racial discrimination, particularly in rental housing. The existence of discrimination in housing and public accommodations was cited by legislators who passed state laws banning those practices in the 1960's and later in the '70's
1963 September. More than 400 people march down Congress Street in Portland, and join 200 more at the Cathedral Guild Hall to protest the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala. in which four girls were killed.
1963 State legislators kill a bill that would have banned racial discrimination in rental housing. The bill, which was opposed by many landlords, the
Maine Association of Real Estate Boards and the Portland Board of Realtors, is approved in a weaker version in 1965.
1963 Several Mainers led by the NAACP participate in the March on Washington.
1964 The NAACP Portland branch is again organized and Gerald E. Talbot elected President. Mr. Talbot goes on to serve as president two other times.
1965 More than 2,000 people march down Portland's Congress Street to protest the death of the Rev. James J. Reeb, a Boston pastor who was killed during the Selma, Ala. civil rights demonstration.
1968 Approximately 400 people march in downtown Portland to protest the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
1971 Legislators approved creation of the Maine Human Rights Commission to enforce compliance with the Maine Human Rights Act, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, age, religion, and ethnic heritage. Robert E. Talbot from Bangor serves as the first Executive Director and the only black to head an arm of state government.
1972 Gerald E. Talbot of Portland is the first African American to be elected to the state Legislature. He is re-elected in 1974 and 1976. During his tenure, he sponsors legislation to create a Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday which doesn't pass for another ten years.
1977 The Maine legislature adopts a bill requiring the renaming of Maine brooks, hills and islands that include the word nigger, four years after Rep. Talbot first sponsors legislation arguing for the change.
1982 William Burney is the first African American elected to the Augusta city council. He serves a total of three terms before being elected as Mayor. Mayor Burney goes on to serve four two-year terms ending in 1996.
1982 The NAACP Prison branch in Thomaston is established with the help of then Portland branch President Neville Knowles.
1985 Black Education & Cultural History, Inc. publishes "Twenty Years, Portland Branch NAACP 1964-1984" which becomes the only published history of the NAACP in Maine.
1995 The University of Southern Maine creates the first African American Archives of Maine using the documents and historical collection of Gerald E. Talbot as its foundation.
1996 John Jenkins is the first African American to be elected as a state senator in Maine after serving two terms as the Mayor of Lewiston.
1998 The Committee to Restore the Abyssinian buys the former Abyssinian Church from the city of Portland for $250. The city had seized the property for back taxes.
1999 Richard Lawrence is appointed as the state's first African American judge.
1999 Former Portland Police Officer Winston McGill becomes the only African American Portland firefighter since the 1800's.
2003 Portland branch sponsors its first annual Excellence in Education Ceremony to mark the accomplishments of college graduates of African desent.
