Historical retrospective focuses on the African American experiences

With the wide eyes of childhood, Amelia Osborne of Waterville, in a dress of ribbons and flowers, looks at us from 100 years ago.

She is the poster girl for “Glimpses of Black Life in Central Maine,” an historical retrospective of the African American presence in that region that opens Friday, Feb 8, in Portland. The exhibit is loaded with resources that lead to a more genuine perspective on lives that have been left out of the telling of Maine history.

Amelia’s gaze across a century pierces the denials and myths of African American participation in Maine. Real tragedies and injustices that saturated the daily lives of people of the African diaspora in Maine for more than 400 years are not one-dimensional stories or anomalies. They are a part of whole lives, woven of families, friends, foes and allies, contributions, accomplishments, joy in spite of sadness and danger.

Documents, letters, photographs, artifacts in The African American Collection of Maine, a component of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, make it a keeper of stories. They are stories from the diversity of people who have made homes here, giving a more complete picture of Maine’s history, our lives today and the road to Maine’s future.

The Center is also home to the Judaica Collection and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection. The collections are an opportunity to know people not only as targets of prejudice and injustice, but as brave and hopeful pursuers of life within the cacophony and symphony of the rough-edged American story.

Maine was the place that Amelia’s father, Samuel Osborne, came after the Civil War. He made his living as the janitor at Colby College in Waterville, and was both appreciated and ridiculed. In his declining years, he was revered and honored for his virtues and commitment to the college. Amelia grew up to become a nurse and worked at Colby.

Her sister Marion Osborne graduated from Colby in 1900. In the 1930s, Osborne family members provided housing for student Solomon Fuller, Colby class of 1935, when he wasn’t welcomed in the college dorms.

George Washington Kemp set up a farm, raised a family and the Kemp Family Singers provided many enjoyable concerts for the people of Maine. After his stint in the army under General O.O. Howard of Leeds, Civil War veteran Samuel Johnson fought against slavery with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and then went home to his family and increasing discrimination on Malaga Island.

Over a hundred years before the 1960s civil rights era, African Americans in Maine were advocates for freedom. Barbershop owner John D. Carter of Augusta was a persistent and fervent abolitionist. 1850 records document 220 black residents in the Bath-Brunswick area, with families in Lewiston and Gardiner. Robert Benjamin Lewis, born in Gardiner in 1798, grew up and went off to work on ships in the Atlantic and down into the Caribbean. Back home in Maine he became a successful inventor, active abolitionist and in 1836 became a published writer on African American and Native American history.

The roster of soldiers of the American Revolution ironically includes slave, as well as free Africans, from Maine fighting for a taste of freedom.

Opening night for Glimpses of Black Life in Central Maine includes speakers who are today’s living links to Maine history. Gerald E. Talbot, whose African American ancestors have their roots in 18th-century China, Maine, will sign “Maine’s Visible Black History,” a book co-authored with white, lifelong civil rights activist and writer Harriet H. Price. It took Talbot and Price more than 10 years to research the wealth of black history in the book. Fortunately for Maine, some of the work has entered the Center’s collection.

Talbot, the first African American elected to the Maine Legislature, was a major inspiration for the Sampson Center for Diversity in 1994 when he donated his collection of personal papers and other artifacts to the university.

Former Augusta mayor and Maine native William D. Burney Jr., the son of one of the first presidents of the Central Maine NAACP, is also invited to speak. Neville Knowles of Lewiston, co-founder of the Central Maine branch, three-time president of the Portland branch and veteran of the fight for equal housing which culminated in a Maine Fair Housing Bill in 1965, is on Friday’s program, as is former Maine Supreme Court Justice Louis Scolnik, a vice president and legal counsel for the Central Maine Branch of the NAACP founded in 1961.

The telling of Maine through all of its peoples’ stories should be a great source of pride for this state. All of us are Amelia. By telling our story we light up the past, which better illuminates the present and future journeys toward making Maine a place for realizing American dreams.

Victoria Mares-Hershey is director of development for Portland West, and is a member of the steering committee of the University of Southern Maine’s Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine.