314 Forest Ave
Portland, ME 04101
USA
Each winter, we sponsor a series of public talks exploring how people and events helped shape New England into what it is today. Join us in our 14th year of providing enriching experiences to our community from notable experts on various historic topics. The series is hosted by USM.
February 24 – Andy O’Brien will present “Black Mainers and the Struggle for Freedom and Equality in the 19th Century”
Since the Colonial era, African Americans in Maine have fought for liberation, first by resisting their enslavement and petitioning for their emancipation and then by joining national movements for abolitionism and civil rights. O’Brien traces the roots of Maine’s racial justice movement from slavery to its formal abolition in 1865, covering the role of Black Mainers in electoral politics in the antebellum period and grassroots organizing in the abolitionist and National Colored Convention movements. Learn about influential Black Mainers like activist Reuben Ruby, intellectual Robert Benjamin Lewis, pioneering journalist John Brown Russwurm, Reverend George H. Black, and the radical preacher Reverend William C. Monroe.