The African American
Collection of Maine
Part of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity
in Maine
Of the University of Southern Maine Library’s
Special Collections
The African American presence in Maine dates from
the United States’ early colonial period.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, strong
African American communities in Portland, Bangor,
and other areas, have struggled for prosperity,
civil rights, and equality, and have made important
contributions to the culture and economy of the
state. There are no other collections of extensive
breadth or depth that reflect the presence of this
community. The University of Southern Maine Library
has established and is developing a broad-based
collection of manuscripts, printed works, visual
material, audio material, and artifacts representing
the full historical and cultural record of the AfricanAmerican experience in Maine and its connections
with the experience of African Americans regionally and nationally.
The mission of the African American Collection of
Maine is as follows: to provide a repository for
the collection and preservation of a variety of
records documenting Maine’s African Americans;
to emphasize the importance of such material; organize
and catalog this material making it available to
scholars, teachers, students of all ages, and the
general public; to sponsor educational programs
and exhibitions within and beyond the University
of Southern Maine about Maine’s African American
community and history; to generate scholarship;
and, to work with other institutions in reaching
the above goals.
History
The African American Archives of Maine (original name of the Colection) was inspired
by Gerald E. Talbot. Mr. Talbot was the first African
American elected to the Maine State legislature
and his family has been in Maine since the eighteenth
century. As Mr. Talbot explained in April 1994:
“It is because of my long involvement in
civil rights in Maine and New England and my deep
interest and involvement in my Black culture and
history, that I have collected and preserved pieces
of that black history, nationally and locally, for
others to see and learn from.”
Another inspiration came from the documentary Anchor
of the Soul that focused attention on the struggle
to maintain a black community in New England. Shoshana
Hoose, who was largely responsible for researching
and making the documentary, and Gerald Talbot began
meeting with officials for the University of Southern
Maine in 1994. They wanted to build a collection
that would document and preserve African American
culture and history. In 1995 Mr. Talbot donated
his collection to the University and it became the
basis of the African American Archives of Maine.
Not surprisingly, Talbot’s gift was followed
by material donated by Anchor of the Soul filmmakers
Ms. Hoose and Karin Odlin.
In 1997 the University hired a faculty scholar
to interpret the collection and to encourage research
based on the Archives. Also in that year, the University,
as part of its commitment to diversity, established
the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine.
One of its goals is to collect and preserve primary
and secondary research materials on the experience
of diverse groups in Maine. It was only natural
that the African American Archives of Maine become
one of the four major collections of the new Center.
In 2002, t he African American Archives of Maine became the African American Collection of Maine. It is administered
by the University Library’s Special Collections
and is open to the public.
Description of the African American Collection of
Maine:
The Collection contains a variety of print, manuscript,
and three-dimensional materials. The majority of
the collections are paper based, including manuscripts,
books, magazines, posters, and photographs; however,
there is a significant collection of artifacts.
In both the Gerald E. Talbot Collection and Lee
Forest Collection there are objects from nineteenth-
and twentieth-century popular culture, such as political
and social buttons, cookie jars, and statutes, which
document images and perceptions of African Americans.
There are also audio-visual materials, mostly created
in the 1990s. One of the richest resources is the
photographs in the Talbot Collection, which document
African Americans in Maine in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Much of the collection is geographically
linked to Maine, but there are many items that are
national in scope.
