Authors to introduce Maine black history

BANGOR – Of course there were black people in Maine in the 19th century, and not just in cities like Bangor, Portland and Lewiston.

Blacks also lived in Dixmont and Alton, in Glenburn, Passadumkeag, Milford, Hampden, Bucksport, Castine, Frankfort and more than 200 other Maine towns.

So it’s not surprising there is great interest in a new book by H.H. Price and Gerald E. Talbot, “Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People,” published by Tilbury House in Gardiner.

More than 250 people turned out to meet the authors at a reception in Portland, and now there will be an opportunity to hear a presentation and meet Price and Talbot at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, in the Lecture Hall at Bangor Public Library.

Talbot is a Bangor native who represented Portland in the Maine Legislature – the first African-American to serve in that body.

He has long been a preserver of black history, having donated his Talbot Collection – now a major part of the African American Collection of Maine at the Glickman Family Library at the University of Southern Maine’s Special Collections. Its items range from a set of slave handcuffs and leg irons to a 1925 Ku Klux Klan charter from Auburn.

Talbot also wrote for the book the article “Bangor, My Hometown,” with sketches of several of the African American families he knew growing up in the 1930s and 1940s.

His other contributions to “Maine’s Visible Black History” include “The Attic at 24 Carroll Street,” with samples of several of the photographs Talbot found in the family home in Bangor.

The volume has plenty of statistical information with listings such as black Revolutionary War and Civil War soldiers.

From Bangor, William Fenno, James W. Griffin, William Kelly, William H. Treadwell, Augustus Van Meter and Henry Woodfield served in the Union Navy, and Paris O’Ree was in the 11th Maine Regiment.

Dana Lippitt wrote up an interesting timeline for Thomas G. Brown, the first black doctor in Bangor. It includes information on several of his relatives, as well.

There is also a wonderful article on “Researching Black Genealogy” by Douglas A. Hall.

Hall’s points include the fact that through intermarriage and assimilation, a family “could move from B to M to W [black to mulatto to white] in three decades in the eyes of census enumerators.”

Richard D’Abate, executive director of the Maine Historical Society said of the new book, “The publication of this book has retrieved from oblivion an element of Maine’s social reality … that has gone missing for centuries, either through ignorance or disregard or active suppression. The irreducible facts are before us – the evidence of a living black presence in and throughout Maine – and these facts will remain before us, like a foundation, and be added to by scholars and community members yet to come.”

“Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People” is a ground-breaking book by Price and Talbot with 42 contributing writers and 240 photographs. The book illuminates black Mainers and their contributions, early history, slavery, the underground railroad, arts, sciences, law, politics, civil rights, religion, education, military and sports.

The book was published by Tilbury House with the support of the African American Collection of Maine at the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine. Tilbury House is based in Gardiner and publishes Maine, New England and maritime books as well as award-winning children’s books. For more information, visit www.tilburyhouse.com.

The Sept. 9 event is part of Bangor Public Library’s Meet the Author series and is open to the public free. The Bangor Museum and Center for History is the co-sponsor and will sell books at the library after the presentation. For information, call the library at 947-8336 or Tilbury House publishers at 582-1899.