LEWISTON – Black dots on a Maine map, each representing at least one African American family in the middle 19th century, tell much of the story in an instant.

The dots covered hundreds of Maine towns from Kittery to Calais and represented thousands of people.

“People think, ‘This is a state that is so lily-white and has no black history,'” writer Bob Greene told an audience Tuesday at the Lewiston Public Library. “No one can ever say there is no black history.”

A first-of-its-kind book aims to back up the statement.

“Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of its People” details African-American contributions here for centuries, from early settlements that predated the Pilgrims arrival to present day politicians, writers and artists.

“If you don’t teach this, you have cheated your kids,” said Gerald Talbot, who compiled the 429-page book with partner H.H. Price.

“Now, you get to look,” he said. “Now, you get to see.”

Talbot, Greene and book contributor Elaine Kemp Bragdon led a panel discussion Tuesday at the Lewiston library’s Marsden Hartley Cultural Center. About 50 people attended.

The book grew out of a partnership created by Price and Talbot. Talbot had been collecting photos and stories of Black Mainers for decades. Meanwhile, Price had created a museum exhibit following Maine’s stops on the Underground Railroad.

They combined their work, settling on their focused history of a too-forgotten population.

Greene, an African American who can trace his family back for eight generations in Maine, said he hopes the book will give other blacks a sense of their families contribution here.

For some, it may give them a sense of ownership within their communities, one that they might not feel if they can’t see their family’s imprint on their hometown

“I consider myself a Maineiac, with an ‘e,'” said Greene, a long-time Associated Press writer who edited the book.

He began researching his own family history in 1992. He managed to trace his own family back to 1783 in New Gloucester.

Among his family were leaders in the abolition movement and a Portland deputy fire chief. A grandfather had served in the Texas Legislature and had been in the inner circle of the presidential campaign that re-elected Ulysses Grant for president.

Yet, so much is forgotten, he said. And the memory lapse is not only here in Maine.

“We’re stuck up on the end of the country,” he said.

Other histories which follow African Americans in the U.S. have also failed to mark their contributions here, failing to understand the importance of Portland as a port, especially in the 19th century.

To people from away – even historians – the region is ignored, Talbot said.

“There is no Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont,” he said. “That’s an illusion we live under.”

But blacks are here. And they always have been.

Talbot wondered how the people on the cover of the book might regard their stories inside.

“They are all first class citizens,” he said.

The book includes the work of 42 writers. It was published by Gardiner-based Tilbury House.