African American Studies Commons^™

Aa Ms 29 African American Oral History Collection, Jill Piekut Roy, Lex Lecrone

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Description

The Center for the Study of Lives was established in 1988 by Robert Atkinson, professor emeritus of human development, multicultural studies, and religious studies at University of Southern Maine. Collection includes recordings and documents related to oral histories conducted by Jill Cournoyer and other students of Joseph Conforti. Interviewees are Eugene Cummings, Rev. Margaret Lawson, Ronald S. Lynch, Leola Marshall, Dana Richardson, and Gerald E. Talbot. Also includes a speech by Eugene Jackson. Interviewees speak about their lives and histories as African Americans in the United States, particularly in Portland, Maine.

Date Range:

1985-1996

Size of Collection:

0.25 Linear …

Quote Transcript, We Exist Series 5: Stories Of Education And Employment In Maine, University Of Southern Maine Digital Projects

Quotes

Accompanying materials for We Exist Series 5: Stories of Education and Employment in Maine.

We4: Leisure Quotes, Lance Gibbs Phd

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Welcome to the fourth exhibit in the series of “We Exist”. In this section we have selected quotes that represent and explain how Maine’s Black residents’ create the processes behind their engagement in particular leisure activities. The quotes also highlight the particular types of leisure activities that Maine’s Black residents suggest that they are involved in. The quotes are taken from transcripts of the oral history project "'Home Is Where I Make It': African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine”. The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of …

Aa Ms 19 Eugene Jackson Papers, Emily Margaret Newell

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This collection is comprised of family photographs, photo albums, bibles, hymnals, and newspaper from the early 20th century onward. The collection is organized into three series:

Series 1: Photographs

This series includes the personal photographs of Eugene Jackson’s friends and family as far back as the early 1900s. The most common themes and activities found in these photographs are leisure activities such as trips to the beach or the mountains, family get-togethers, professional portraits, and Christmas greeting cards.

Subseries 1.1: Loose Photographs

Loose photographs are organized into topical folders.

Subseries 1.2: Ruby Family Photograph Album

The photograph album includes black-and-white …

We Exist Series 1: Family - Quotes, Lance Gibbs Phd

Series 1: Family - Quotes

In this section, we have selected quotes that represent how Black residents in Maine view their family life. The quotes are taken from transcripts of the oral history project “Home Is Where I Make It”: African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine.” The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of the “Home Is Where I Make It” project was to highlight Black residents’ history and struggle for community in southern Maine in both their formal organizational memberships and day-to-day activities. The interviews, however, unearthed a wealth …

Aa Ms 01 Gerald E. Talbot Collection Finding Aid, David Andreasen, Kristin D. Morris, Karin A. France, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, Caroline Remley, Andrea Harkins, Kara Kralik, Anya O'Meara

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Description:

Gerald E. Talbot was the first African American to be elected to the Maine State Legislature. He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978, and worked with the Maine chapter of the NAACP and the State Board of Education. He also took part in the struggle for civil rights in other parts of the country, as well as in Maine. The Collection includes Talbot’s personal papers, records of his term in the Maine House of Representatives, of his work with the NAACP in Maine and with the State Board of Education. The Collection contains books, …

Abdurraqib, Samaa, Iris Sangiovanni, Samar Ahmed

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Samaa Abdurraqib is a Black, queer, Muslim woman living in Portland, Maine. Abdurraqib was raised in Columbus, Ohio. She attend the University of Ohio, and later the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a PhD in English Literature. After graduating she worked as a visiting professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Next she went on to work the American Civil Liberties Union in Maine as a reproductive rights organizer. She now works for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Her advocacy and organizing work has included places such as Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine, …

Aa Ms 08 N. T. Swezey's Son & Co. Tin Sign Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

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Description:

N. T. Swezey (Noah Terry) (1814-1888) was a flour merchant in New York City. He ran a successful business for over forty years at 176 South St., and was one of the founders of the New York Produce Exchange. This collection contains a reproduction of a sign advertising Northwest Consolidated Milling Company flour. The sign depicts the figure of a black child standing behind and slightly below the figure of a white child. The white figure is sitting on a container of the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company’s flour and is holding a slice of white bread. Both children have …

Aa Ms 11 Lee Forest Figurines Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

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Description:

Lee Forest, Director of Environmental Services at the University of Southern Maine, donated the figurines in 2002. In the early years of the twentieth century the commoditization of Aunt Jemima expanded beyond commercial flour mix to include a diverse array of products such as rag dolls, dish towels, cookie jars and salt-and-pepper shakers. Eventually, a husband was added, Uncle Mose, and two children, Diana and Wade. Household notions depicting the family continued to be produced into the 1960s, when the civil rights and black consciousness movements encouraged an examination of the symbolism behind representations of African Americans. The collection …

Aa Ms 09 Flynn Seal Presses Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

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Description:

Stephen Flynn discovered these two seal presses on Higgins Beach in Scarborough, Maine, in 1978. They were found in the remains of the Silver Sands Hotel, which had to be destroyed after damage caused by a storm. Two seal presses were from the Women's Ku Klux Klan organizations of Augusta and Bath, Maine. The one from WKKK chapter of Augusta, Maine reads: “Women of the Ku Klux Klan; Capital City Klan; Klan No 11 Augusta, Maine.” In the center there is a shield with a cross and the letters W, K, K, K, at the top, bottom, and sides …

Aa Ms 10 Ku Klux Klan Photograph Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

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Description:

The Ku Klux Klan Photograph is a black-and-white image of a KKK march that took place in Lincoln, Maine in 1927. The print measures 8 inches by 9.5 inches.

Date Range:

1927

Size of Collection:

0.10 ft.

Aa Ms 07 African American Maine Photograph Album Finding Aid, Elizabeth Sistare

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Description:

This collection consists of a wooden photograph album and three packets of loose photographs of African American women on vacation in Maine – about 15 women, and a total of 112 photos. They might have been traveling to Maine for a church group gathering [suggested by multiple photos of the All Saints by the Sea church] or as a woman’s group vacationing in Maine. Many locations are identifiable as being along the Mid-coast. Many of the photos are of Pemaquid Point, Boothbay, the shore line, and boats. The date range is 1940s and 50s. The album was purchased from …

Sam Gen Ms 01 Jean Byers Sampson Papers Finding Aid, John D. Knowlton, Susannah Clark

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Description:

Jean Byers Sampson was a 1944 graduate of Smith College. Early in her post-Smith career, she conducted and wrote the 1947, “A Study of the Negro in Military Service,” which contributed to President Harry Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces. Sampson moved to Maine in the early 1950s with her husband, Richard Sampson, a Bates College mathematics professor, and she played a unique and critical role in the state until her death in 1996. Over the course of her life in Maine, she served as the founder of the first chapter of the NAACP in Maine, local and …

Aa Ms 06 Home Is Where I Make It - Oral History Collection Finding Aid, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

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Description:

This oral history project was directed by Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee, of USM, and Rachel Talbot Ross. The interviews were conducted by local high school students. The Collection includes transcripts, photographs and audiotapes from the two phases of the project, which documented African American life in the Greater Portland and Lewiston-Auburn areas.

Date Range:

2001-2003

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Aa Ms 05 Cummings Guest House Register Finding Aid, Karin A. France

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Description:

The Cummings family of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, ran a guest house from 1923 until 1993. Register in which guests signed themselves in or were signed in by staff at the Cummings Guest House, 110 Portland Ave., Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Includes signatures of family members who attended reunions after the Guest House ceased operation.

Date Range:

1923-1998

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Aa Ms 04 Eastern Real Estate Archives Finding Aid, Patrick J. Mooney

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Description:

The Eastern Real Estate Company was an association of African-Americans who bought and sold real estate in the Portland area from 1912-2001. The records in the Archives include articles of association, minutes, financial records, stock records, listings of stockholders, tax records, bank books and legal documents.

Date Range:

1912-2001

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Aa Ms 03 Harold E. Richardson Papers Finding Aid, Susie R. Bock

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Description:

Harold E. Richardson (1922-1993) was born in Portland and attended West School and Portland High School. Richardson was elected to the Portland Water District Board in 1963. He served on the Board until at least 1987, including a stint as president in the late 60s. He was very active in the Portland community: his contributions include service on the Maine State Law Enforcement Planning and Assistance Agency and membership in the Mt. Lebanon Masonic Lodge and Deering Lions Club, among many others. The Papers contain his scrapbook, documenting his many contributions to the Portland community, including serving on the …

Diversity At The Ballot Box: Electoral Politics And Maine's Minority Communities, Post-Wwii To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Selma Botman, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck, Bob Greene

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

As this year’s Sampson Center exhibition makes clear the powerful desire to find historical inevitability in the advance toward equal opportunity for all Americans has become far more nuanced by the sometimes discomforting reminders that advances at the ballot box are neither as clear-cut nor as unconditional as we once hoped. The ancient antipathies of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are not so easily elided by political campaigns and elections. The pace of social consensus requires a degree of patience and continuing attention that tries the very fabric of American life while we attempt to comprehend the consequences of change wrought …

'Remember Me?' The Life And Legacy Of Jean Byers Sampson, University Of Southern Maine, Joseph S. Wood, Abraham J. Peck, Mark Lapping, Margaret Ann Brown

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

In April 1961, Jean Byers Sampson wrote to the director of branches of the NAACP notifying him that she was involved with establishing a branch in Lewiston-Auburn. Because Jean had worked for the national branch of the NAACP in the late 1940s, she began her letter with a friendly “Remember me?” It is a short, intimate phrase that characterized how Jean worked throughout her life. “‘Remember Me?’ The Life and Legacy of Jean Byers Sampson,” the third annual event of the Sampson Center, is a tribute to how one person’s life changed Maine.

Table of Contents:

The Mosaic of Maine …

Liberating Visions: Religion And The Challenge Of Change In Maine,1820 To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Susie Boch, Joseph S. Wood, Maureen Elgersman Lee, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation.

Table of Contents:

Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections)

The African American …

Ms. Joanna Boley-Lee On Leisure, Maureen Elgersman Lee

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Maureen Elgersman Lee.

Interviewee: Ms. Joanna Boley-Lee (age 66; born 1937 in Newark, New Jersey; lived in Maine for 8 ½ years)

“I think my closing reflections would be that when I came to Lewiston I remember walking across the bridge that goes across the Androscoggin, the extension of Main Street, just sort of looking out, and there was a black man with a camera and I thought, good, there's a black person. So I went up to him and I introduced myself, told him I was new in the area and he tells me he was visiting. I …

Mrs. Rose Jackson On Employment, Hamida Suja

Quotes

Mrs. Rose Jackson Full Interview

Rose Jackson was born in Louisville, Mississippi, to Willie O Clayton Hathorne and Bertha Ophelia (Young) Hathorne; she had three sisters and three brothers. She left school at fifteen to marry her first husband, with whom she had five children; after his death, she married John Jackson, with whom she had another daughter. She worked as a cleaner and hairdresser, and received her diploma from Portland High night school. At the time of this interview, she had been living in Maine 40 years; her family moved here because she had a brother-in-law who had been …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Leisure, Maureen Elgersman Lee

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Maureen Elgersman Lee

Interviewees: Reverend Albert Jackson (born in Slabfork, Virginia; age 61; lived in Maine for 43 years) and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson (born March 1948 in Marengo County, Alabama; age 55; lived in Maine for 3.5 years)

“Well I like it. You know, I describe it as, ah, a place where you can shop. I notice when it rain, a lot of people go out to eat. They like to eat here in Maine. And I've noticed -- I've (inaudible) –but this is a good area to live in.”

Interviewer: “Are there any events in Lewiston and Auburn's …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Employment, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Reverend Albert Jackson and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson Full Interview

(Clemmie not pictured)

Rev. Albert Jackson was born in Slabfork, West Virginia, in 1942. At the time of this interview, he had been living in the Lewiston Auburn area for around forty three years. Clemmie Jackson, Rev. Jackson’s wife, was born in Marengo County, Alabama, in 1948; at the time of this interview, she had been living in Lewiston Auburn for around three years. The couple had three sons. Rev. Jackson graduated from high school in Lewiston Auburn; Mrs. Jackson graduated high school in Alabama, and received a degree in …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Education, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Reverend Albert Jackson and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson Full Interview

Rev. Albert Jackson was born in Slabfork, West Virginia, in 1942. At the time of this interview, he had been living in the Lewiston Auburn area for around forty three years. Clemmie Jackson, Rev. Jackson’s wife, was born in Marengo County, Alabama, in 1948; at the time of this interview, she had been living in Lewiston Auburn for around three years. The couple had three sons. Rev. Jackson graduated from high school in Lewiston Auburn; Mrs. Jackson graduated high school in Alabama, and received a degree in sociology with a minor …

Mr. James Sheppard On Leisure, Sanela Zukic

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Sanela Zukic

Interviewee: Mr. James Sheppard (born in New York City in 1924; both his parents immigrated from Antigua in the West Indies to Canada, then they came to the United States in 1923; moved to Maine in 1971).

“But in addition to that we'd have lots of summer events: picnics and that sort. But that's separate; that's a different thing.”

“Between my wife and I, we saw to it that they did a lot of reading. And we did a lot of traveling. We did a lot of traveling to the Caribbean and South America, and we took …

Emma Jackson On Employment, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Emma Jackson Full Interview

Emma Jackson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941. She and her husband John Isaac Jackson had three children, and at the time of the interview she had been living in the Lewiston-Auburn area for forty five years. She spent the first ten years of her life in Maine doing domestic work, and then worked in the nursing field for thirty years, at a number of different facilities owned by Central Maine Medical Center. She discusses her life in Lewiston, challenges in finding housing she and her husband faced when they first moved to the area, …

Mr. Richard Terrence On Leisure, Rachel Talbot-Ross

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Rachel Talbot-Ross

Interviewee: Mr. Richard Terrence (age 57; born 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio; moved to Maine in October 1975)

“And, you know, raising my children is interesting in that as they grew older and as they noticed the very differences, they were starting to mix in very well. They were making friends, and, you know, they were involved in sporting activities and community.”

Mr. Richard Terrence On Education And Employment, Rachel Talbot Ross

Quotes

Mr. Richard Terrence Full Interview

Richard Tarrence was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1945, the second-oldest of seven siblings. His parents moved to Ohio from the South in the 1930s; his maternal grandfather was a bishop in the AME church, and his paternal grandfather was a sharecropper. He was drafted in 1965 and spent four years in the Air Force, including time in Vietnam. He married his ex-wife, Loretta Wilson, who was from Maine, and they moved to Portland in 1975. He completed a degree in Criminal Justice at USM in 1979, and spent twenty-two years working for Allstate Insurance. …

Mrs. Emma Jackson On Leisure, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Maureen Elgersman Lee

Interviewee: Mrs. Emma Jackson (age 62; born 1941 in Atlanta Georgia; lived in Maine for 46 years; has three children)

“Because it wasn't ever in the - the -- the, ah, club scenes, or any scenes like that. Actually, we live, ah, a really sheltered life. We went to church. We were involved. But the church was our main focus and our main goal. And I -- and -- and our lives were wrapped -- revolved around that. So that might be -- which would be a reason why we didn't--”