Making a home in Maine

In anticipation of a symposium hosted by USM, The Phoenix talks with three leaders of the African-American community

By Noah Bruce

I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America (1835)

The differences between black and white folk are not blood or color, and the ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate us. The common road of hope which we all traveled has brought us into a stronger kinship than any words, laws, or legal claims.

—Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices (1941)

These are divergent voices. De Tocqueville and Wright predict disparate futures for race relations in America, and it remains to be seen who will be found more accurate. One could argue either position today. The answer may hinge upon whether America’s multi-cultural population can come to look upon itself as one people: when everyone can comfortably call this country “home.”

On September 20, The University of Southern Maine is kicking off a four-day symposium titled “I Make My Home in Maine: Honoring Black and African Heritage.” The symposium will feature speakers, including Nobel prize winning author Wole Soyinka, a tour of underground railroad sites

in the Old Port, an art exhibit at the Museum of African Tribal Art, and an African drumming ceremony.

At the Phoenix, we were especially intrigued by the notion embedded in the symposium’s title: of “home.” What is the difference between living somewhere and calling that place home? Africans and African-Americans have always faced specific challenges living in the United States, but in Maine these challenges are, in some ways, unique. According to the last census, Maine, with a black population under one percent, is the whitest state in the nation. Maine is also unique in that it is home to a greater number of Africans — people born in Africa — than African-Americans — those born in the United States. How do these groups interact, if at all?

The symposium grew out of the Maine Oral History Project: “Home is Where I Make It” — a collection of 10 in-depth interviews with African Americans living in the Portland and South Portland areas. The Oral History Project was a joint effort between USM, the city of Portland, Portland High School, Green Memorial AME Zion Church, and Williams Temple Church of God in Christ. The leaders of the project, Maureen Elgersman Lee, USM professor of history and scholar for the university’s African American Archives, and Rachel Talbot Ross, director of Portland’s Multi-Cultural Office, are also co-directors of the upcoming symposium.

We caught up with Elgersman Lee and Talbot Ross, along with Winston McGill, the vice president of Maine’s NAACP office, to ask them about the symposium, racism, and their notions of black people — both Africans and African Americans — making their home in Maine.

WINSTON MCGILL: Vice President of the Maine NAACP.

Winston McGill

Phoenix: According to the last census, Maine was the whitest state in the nation. I was wondering if that made it more difficult for black people, both Africans and African Americans.

Winston McGill: As far as living here and carrying on day-to-day activities, I don’t think it’s more difficult, but I think the difficulty is a little more subtle when you tend not to see people of your own color, background, ethnicity. There may be a little bit of an uncomfort level, but it’s in a subtle way.

I think anybody who’s Caucasian can relate if they go to an all-black country, Jamaica, something like that, and they’re in an area where they don’t see anybody who’s white. Even if there’s no danger or anything like that, they may feel a little uneasy.

And I think that’s something that we feel here. Although you grow up here and you kind of get used to it, it’s still there on the fringes of your psychological vision, if you will.

 

Q: Do you think that, because this is such a white state, the amount of racism in the state is lessened because some white people would be paranoid of large numbers of people who look different from them? Or do you think there is more racism because people are less educated [about diversity]?

A: I think at times it can go both ways. But the racism here, which is here, is much more subtle and covert, as opposed to being overt. I think there’s a lot of racism by assumption and if you want to call white privilege that, a lot of people just take for granted and . . .

 

Q: Ummm. . .

A: Go ahead.

 

Q: I just wanted to ask you to explain what you meant by assumption.

A: There are cultural voids. There are, say, foods in the supermarket that we may desire, or something as simple as getting your hair cut by people who know how to cut black hair. So there are these voids that aren’t filled because people just don’t take into consideration there are Africans and African-Americans in their community. It’s almost like you’re hidden, you’re invisible.

And there’s just a lot of assumptions that a person of European background can make that a person of African heritage can’t make. If you’re going to a job interview, or you’re looking to apply for housing, or you’re looking for an apartment, we can’t as people with African backgrounds assume that race isn’t going to be a factor. Somebody of European background can [make that assumption]. They don’t even think of it. It’s not even a consideration.

Q: In terms of feeling at home in both America and Maine, what do you think contributes to that feeling? [Including] both outside influences and what people themselves do to create a home.

A: What do you think contributes to feeling at home? Give me that question again.

 

Q: Well I guess the question is, that you’re talking about people who are living in a society where often times they don’t have people who know how to cut black hair, or they go to get an apartment, and they’re not sure if race is going to be a factor or not. If I was experiencing that, I would feel like I wasn’t so much at home. So, are there are other factors on the other side that make people living that experience feel that they can make Maine their home and that they aren’t living in a foreign land?

A: Right. I think on the flip side of the coin we all have good neighbors, good friends who are white, family members. It’s kind of a dual issue. On one hand, you feel very at home. I’m a firefighter in Portland, and I feel very comfortable with my brother firefighters. So it’s not like you’re walking around, and you feel like you’re in a foreign land. I mean, you feel at home, you feel comfortable and all that.

On the other hand, like I said, off in your psychological peripheral vision, like I said, there are issues. But it’s not this thing where I don’t [feel like I’m at home]. Especially for people like myself who grew up in Maine, it’s not something that’s right there on your shoulder all the time as opposed to somebody maybe who is new to this country.

 

Q: Were you born and raised in Maine?

A: I wasn’t born here, but I was raised in Maine.

 

Q: In Portland?

A: In Augusta.

 

Q: In the NAACP does your membership include both Africans and African Americans?

A: It includes everybody. Whites. Everybody.

 

Q: Who are actually dues-paying members?

A: Oh yeah, members of the executive board. Even on the national level, on the national executive board there are whites. So it’s inclusive of everybody.

 

Q: And do you see the interactions between people born in Africa and African-Americans who were born in America? I mean is there some sort of dynamic there you could characterize?

A: It almost depends on the individuals you’re talking with or dealing with. There are Africans here that are very open and have a feeling of kinship and brotherhood to African-Americans, and there are others who don’t feel that way. I think African-Americans have a tendency to look at Africa in a pan-Africanism way as Africa as a whole, some place where our ancestors were taken away from forcibly and then brought here, as opposed to Africans coming here who identify themselves as Somali, Ethiopian, Ugandan. They identify more with their regions of Africa, so there’s a difference of perspective.

 

Q: I wanted to ask you about the proposed slavery museum in Charleston.

A: Well I think it’s long overdue. I think the issue of slavery is something that people want to forget. And I would say people who facilitated that slavery wish to forget and just wish it would go away I think. It won’t. It can’t.

 

Q: What is the benefit from continuing to study it, continuing to keep it in our consciousness?

A: Because it affects African-Americans and Africans to this day. If you look at the issue of slavery, 450 years of the worst kind of slavery ever in human history . . . You know there has been slavery throughout the world. We all know that, but not this type of slavery that stripped people of their heritage, their religion, their family ties. It was a conscious effort to do that. Even though it ended it 1865, it continued in the form of sharecropping which was just another form of slavery. It continued with the Jim Crow Laws, the black laws, the segregation laws, the apartheid that this country had in place, institutional apartheid, up until in my lifetime, in the 1960s. It’s kind of gone underground by systems of exclusion, but it continues today.

So it’s a continuing line and it hasn’t ended. The slavery itself has ended, but the effects of slavery are still very strong in American society. It’s deep rooted. And until this country goes into the reparations [talks] and apologizes and puts it on the front burner, it’s just going to be a festering wound. You know, if you’re an alcoholic you need to admit you’re an alcoholic before you can cure yourself, or if you have cancer, you have to admit you have cancer, then you take your cure.

 

Q: You just mentioned reparations. You think the country needs to give reparations or just have a serious discussion about that?

A: I think we need to give reparations. And when we say reparations a lot of people get confused. I don’t mean reparations in the way that every African-American would receive 40 acres and a mule or $10,000 or something like that. I mean reparations in the form of educational grants or business grants to try to make up for the institutional racism that’s caused African-Americans to be behind in the wealth-building that white Americans have enjoyed for generations.

If you think about it, General Sherman advocated giving every African-American 40 acres and a mule. Well, if you think what that 40 acres and a mule would have done generationally, to this day 40 acres is land, wealth. People would have had wealth in their families, passed on land to their families which would have increased education etcetera, etcetera. It’s just amazing if you think of what that simple little 40 acres and a mule would have done for African-Americans today. The whole thing was shot down by President Johnson after Lincoln was killed. So it’s a continuing line, it’s a continuum. It’s not something that can be put on the back burner and just forgotten about.

 

Q: I wanted to ask you about the difference between the North and South in this country, but you said you were raised in Maine. Have you spent time in the South?

A: Yeah, I’ve spent time in the South.

 

Q: Because what I’ve heard from some people is that the North has the reputation of being less racist than the South, but then other people have said “Well, the truth of it is the South has more overt racism, but the North has the same racism just it’s not okay to come out and say it, where it might be more acceptable to [express racism] in some parts of the South.” Is that something you think is somewhat true?

A: Yeah somewhat. I think the divisions in some of the southern areas are more accepted, but I think Malcolm X put it best when he said anything south of the Canadian border is the South, so don’t fool yourself. I tend to agree with that.

 

Q: After I wrote that article [about slavery] I had someone write in. I was saying the president should apologize for slavery, or someone in the government should come out and say “look we did this. It was terrible. We’re sorry.”

A: Right. Because it was sanctioned by the government.

 

Q: And I got a letter saying “Have you talked to black leaders? Do they want this? Blah, blah, blah.” So, I’m asking you as a black leader, is that something you think would be appropriate?

A: Yeah, as a part of the whole reparations package, definitely there should be a policy by the government. I mean, the government [apologized] to Japanese-Americans who were put in internment camps for what, four or five years during WWII, and you can’t apologize to African-Americans who were in the worst kind of human misery for 450 years? I mean come on, yeah, absolutely.

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MAUREEN ELGERSMAN LEE: USM Professor of History and Faculty Scholar for the university’s African-American Archives of Maine.

Maureen Elgersman Lee

Phoenix: Now, why did you do the Maine Oral History Project? What were you trying to gain?

Maureen Elgersman Lee: What we were trying to gain? Well, If you know anything about African-American history and particularly documenting the history of African-Americans in earnest, one of the most basic, fundamental media for that is oral history . . .

But it’s part of a larger trend. There are a lot of different things going on in the state to really write the history of African-Americans in Maine. There is much that has been left to myth. There is much that is absolutely not known. There is a lot that we think we know but then find out that our knowledge is not exactly accurate. And there is a lot of writing, in some cases revisionist history that needs to be done. This is one small step, and the scale of it is small. We’re only doing 10 [interviews].

We would like to see ourselves doing this again in other locations. Bangor comes to mind. Lewiston, there is a significant African-American presence there. I think it should also be interesting to look at Brunswick and perhaps something tied to Brunswick Naval Air Station because the rise and fall of the black population in Maine has been tied to the military . . . That’s part of the black experience. People move in and move out [of Maine].

There are many ways to reproduce this. This is just a start. The basic idea is that the sooner we start, the sooner we can collect information, and the sooner we start, the fewer people we are going to lose. We realize that time is moving, and we’re doing what we can to preserve the history.

 

Q: I guess this question gets to the larger question of why it is important to preserve history in the first place: What do you hope to get by preserving the history of African-Americans? Do you hope to influence our present, or is it just important to know who came before?

A: Well both. Certainly as a historian it’s important to know what came before. It really defines who we are. It defines who African Americans as a population are in this country by knowing who came before, what happened before.

Even if you’re not a native of Maine, whether you’re born in another state, whether you’re born outside the country. I myself am not a native of the United States. I’m a native of Canada but have a very clear sense that this is tied.

One interesting thing about having done research over the last couple years in Bangor, a very clear connection [is] there was a migration from Canada, particularly New Brunswick to Bangor. So for me, it’s almost going back and doing some Canadian history as a part of that.

 

Q: From these interviews that you’ve done and from your earlier work in Maine, do you have a sense how the black experience is different in Maine than it is in other parts of the country?

A: Well one is scale, and in some cases it’s not that different. I would say probably that’s the big difference, and even just the perspective that blacks live in Maine, that blacks can live in Maine, that they have for, for literally centuries.

 

Q: You mean some people think that blacks can’t live in Maine?

A: Right. Just like blacks can’t live in Canada, despite the fact that they’ve been there for centuries.

 

Q: Are you talking about black people thinking that or white people?

A: Well both. Those perceptions cross racial lines. They absolutely do. And then “Why would you want to live in Maine?” That’s the next question. “Oh you do? Why?” And sometimes, admittedly, some [Mainers] ask that of themselves. I think that also crosses racial boundaries, especially when we get winters like we did this past season.

But really, [the goal is] placing blacks in Maine as part of the larger history of blacks in the United States and the larger history of blacks in the Diaspora. So, really, to kind of demystify what it means to be black in Maine in that sense.

 

Q: When you said scale, did you mean just that there are few numbers?

A: Just sheer numbers, right, sheer numbers. Just when you look at the fact that blacks are less than one percent of the population. I use the term ultra-minority. But that ultra-minority position, less than one percent of the population is not something that is typical even in states where blacks are obviously not the majority of the population. So that ultra-minority status seems to differentiate the experience of blacks here in Maine from other places . . .

Q: I’m curious how racism is affected by the fact that there is such a small percentage of black people in the state. Does that make people less educated about [black] culture or does it make people perhaps less paranoid than in a big city?

A: I think one of the things I’ve seen — and I base this on discussions similar to this in the classes I’ve taught over the last four years — what happens is people lack the day-to-day contact, whether it be the intimate contact as far as having close friends and going to each other’s houses — I mean intimate in that sense of a social intimacy — or a kind of workplace intimacy that comes from working side-by-side with people of color.

What I have found seems to happen is people’s perceptions and people’s understanding of African-Americans comes from popular culture and that is so incredibly dangerous . . .

 

Q: Yup.

A: You also get a sense of a kind of paternalism in that there are — and I’m talking outside of Southern Maine for sure and even outside of central Maine — in smaller areas, perhaps more northern and more western, and again this is based on conversations I’ve had with students who come from those areas, there is a kind of paternalism where there is one or two African-Americans that live in a town or certain jurisdiction. It’s like “we have one,” or “we have two,” and there’s something kind of paternalistic there that’s operating and when you bring it to people’s attention it’s really interesting to see their reaction to it.

But I think popular culture in many cases becomes the place people learn about African-Americans. It’s their first acquaintance with African-Americans. Whether it’s magazines, whether it’s watching sports on television, whether it’s movies.

Very, very, strong perceptions of African-Americans are formed, and then, when they travel or the black population of their home area increases, then they carry these ideas to that meeting and it can be one of fear, it can be one of novelty, it can be this expectation of innate athleticism.

There’s many different ways that it can be represented, but people have gut reactions of what they’ve learned. If they haven’t had any kind of social or workplace intimacy with African-Americans, [these perceptions are] hard to undue. It’s very, very hard to undue. n

 

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RACHEL TALBOT ROSS: Director of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Affairs for the City of Portland.

Rachel Talbot Ross

Phoenix: What is the central theme of the symposium?

Rachel Talbot Ross: The symposium is made up of singular pieces, but they all have the central theme of home, both the practical aspects of home and the historical context of what makes a place a home. Central to well-being is the concept of home, and we want the public, through these events, to get a cultural context of Africans and African-Americans making a home in Maine.

The first piece is the oral history project. That project was about shattering the perceptions that African-Americans didn’t have roots in Maine, and didn’t make contributions in Maine, and that we’re somehow just tacked on. This project was about producing people and experiences that demonstrated our place in Southern Maine and Portland . . .

Home for many people of color is right here in Portland, Maine. We’re not tacked on. Our history is everyone’s history. It’s important we create multiple opportunities to learn about our history.

 

Q: Do you think that most Africans and African-Americans feel at home here?

A: I would not even begin to speak for those individuals. What everyone is after, regardless of where they are from is a safe place to live and raise their children, a place with economic and educational opportunities, a place where their history and art can be present and not subjugated, a place where they have access to social and political processes without reprisal. That makes any place a home . . .

That’s what generations of African-Americans have sought and made here in Portland. We hope this city makes a home for the recently received Africans and for all the immigrants and refugees . . .

I’m a seventh-generation Mainer. I still get asked, “When did you get here?” I have to wonder why they think I just arrived. The first goal [of the symposium] is to honor the significant contributions Africans and African-Americans have made to building Portland.

The second goal is to get people to recognize that our history is their history.

 

Q: What does your job as Director of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Affairs entail?

A: That’s the $50,000 question. When the position was first created it was seen [as a facilitator] of affirmative action, that we need to get more of them in here. It was looking into institutional racism, looking at quality of life issues, understanding why people choose to work for the municipality, or why they choose not to work for the municipality, and barriers to employment. If part of those barriers are you can’t find housing, or your kid is having trouble in school, or you can’t get professional skills. . .

 

Q: Then help them [with these issues?]

A: I try. I also look at sexual and racial harassment in the workplace, and I’m trying to get more minority-owned businesses contracts with the city.

Q: According to the census, Maine is the whitest state in the union. What are the particular challenges an African or African-American faces here?

A: For me, growing up in Maine was very isolating. I went to a predominantly white school in a white city in a white state. It left me thirsty for reaffirming images of who I was. I only got that at church, at home, and at community gatherings. None of the other institutions I interacted with had affirmations for me. There was nobody else who looked like me, nobody who talked like me. I don’t think that’s any different in Portland today.

 

Q: Is it just the lack of numbers [of black people]?

A: That’s part of it, but it’s not so simple. There’s an inherent institutional racism in Portland.

 

Q: Can you give me an example of the institutional racism?

A: It’s really a tokenized version of “I care about you.” It represents itself by only focusing on me and my culture on Martin Luther King Day or another special cultural day. The way institutional racism works is everything is still seen from the majority’s viewpoint. They are not trying to see me through my eyes . . .

There is still a good ol’ boy, white boy network that exists here. It pops up in your face every hour of every day.

When I grew up and I didn’t see my history in the history books. When we read about how “all men are created equal,” but my people were counted as three fifths of a person back then. It’s not having a teacher that looks like me . . .

Noah Bruce can be reached at nbruce@phx.com.