Misunderstanding kills look-alike contest

It is with deep sadness that I report that a planned historical event to be held at the Northern Maine Agriculture Fair and Music Festival has been canceled. Unfortunately, the cancellation stemmed from the complete and total misunderstandings of both the actual historical events, and the historical society’s plans for this awareness-raising event.

The event I am referring to is the recently canceled Jim Cullen Look- Alike Contest. Cullen was the only lynching victim in New England. The one original misunderstanding of the planned look-alike contest stemmed from an individual who mistakenly believed that the Haystack Historical Society planned to re-enact the lynching. This is something the society would never do.

In fact, the contest was actually about Cullen, the man, not about his lynching. From that misunderstanding by one individual, a report made the front pages of a “split” in the community over holding the event. Ironically, this reported “split” that didn’t actually exist ended up actually creating a controversy through the perpetration of even more misinformation.

From the start the events surrounding Cullen’s lynching [in Mapleton] have been influenced by the written word. In fact, a well-known reporter in 1873, who was present for the events, reported to the Maine Historical Society later in his life that he was so certain the lynching would occur that he had written it up as if it had already occurred and sent it out to the newspapers – before it happened! One can only speculate about how his decision to report this event prior to it actually occurring may have influenced his decisions that fateful night in making sure the lynching actually occurred.

Subsequent to the news stories about a community split that didn’t actually exist, other opponents have come forward – five altogether. After the person who was mistaken about the plans, and subsequent to the news stories, Dick Graves, who had written a series of articles based on the abundant folklore of the lynching for a local paper, was contacted by a former police chief in the area. This former police chief felt the planned contest was glorifying the murder of two law officers. In fact, only one of the men who was supposedly killed by Cullen was a law officer. That one officer directly disobeyed his orders. Had he not done so, he would not have died that night. The death of these two men was, nonetheless, tragic. No less tragic was the death of Cullen himself.

The third person to oppose the event was from the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department. This individual was contacted by the media as part of a report on the nonexistent split. Like the former police chief, the sheriff believed two law officers had been killed, and for that reason, he said, the Sheriff’s Department could not support holding the contest. Needless to say, the contest was not about the murder of the two men Cullen was accused of killing.

The fourth person who opposed the event also did so as a result of the reported split that didn’t exist. This person wrote a letter to the editor indicating he believed Cullen may have been innocent. After years of historical research on this subject, I completely agree with his assessment. There is very good historical evidence that Cullen may possibly have been an innocent man. It was a planned part of the contest to present this very information.

The fifth and final person I could learn of was another person who wrote a letter to the editor subsequent to the reported split. This person, while decrying the horrors of racial lynching (and rightly so), apparently didn’t realize that our contest was going to be about the man, not about his lynching, except as it pertained to his possible innocence and the fact that he was the victim of a violent crime himself.

The very night the fifth person’s letter appeared in print, the Northern Maine Fair board of directors voted, although not unanimously, not to allow the contest to occur as a result of the controversy that had not previously existed, being manifested by a reported split in the community.

In a strange irony, Cullen’s lynching, reported to the media in 1873 before it happened, may actually have occurred as a direct result of the very reports of its occurrence. In the same ironic twist of fate, a reported community split that did not exist, over the holding of a look-alike contest, created the reality of a controversy on the part of a total of five individuals.

Each and every one of these individuals had completely misunderstood what the event was all about. Because of this cancellation, the presentation of historical information about Cullen, the victim of the violent crime of lynching, will not be told in the planned format.

Maine historian W. H. Bunting wrote, “There can be no greater goal for historians than to present history in ways that engage the curiosity of the general public.” With the cancellation of the Jim Cullen Look-Alike Contest, the perfect opportunity to promote

an interest in history has been lost.

Dena L. Winslow, Ph.D., of Presque Isle, is a member of the Haystack Historical Society who was involved in planning the now canceled Jim Cullen Look-Alike Contest. She has researched Cullen’s lynching since the 1970s and wrote the recently published book, “They Lynched Jim Cullen, New England’s Only Lynching.”