by Andy O’Brien Originally printed in The Bollard On a September evening in 1840, a group of abolitionist farmers gathered in the vestry of a Baptist meeting house in the small community of Cornish, New Hampshire. Among them were John B.… Read More »Rev. John W. Lewis & His Baptist Crusade Against Slavery
by Andy O’Brien PHOTOS: Reverend Amos Beman & Reverend Amos N. Freeman When the Rev. Amos N. Freeman became the first full-time pastor ofPortland’s Abyssinian Congregational Church in the fall of 1841, a gloriousrevival of the little Black meeting house… Read More »Rev. Amos N. Freeman & a New Era for Black Organizing in Portland
by Andy O’Brien On Friday, Aug. 13, 1835, the new Fourth Congregational Church inPortland, known today as the Abyssinian Meeting House, officiallyorganized. On that summer day, 22 Black congregants of the predominantlywhite Second Congregational Church, who had been officially dismissedfrom… Read More »How Maine’s First Black Church Overcame Division and Unified Black and White Portlanders
by Andy O’Brien In 1830, a “gentleman from Maine” complained in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator that there were no schools for the growing African American population in Portland. It’s not clear whether the anonymous man was Black or white,… Read More »When Portland Schools Segregated Black Children
In the 1830s and ’40s, a reform movement emerged in New England to ensure that all children — regardless of wealth, religion or status — could access a quality education. But the roots of public education in Maine stretch back… Read More »A Progressive School Reform Movement Sweeps Maine
On a spring evening in May, 1835, a group of Black Portlanders gathered at the Abyssinian Meeting House on Newbury Street for what they described as “a respectable meeting of colored citizens.” The purpose of the gathering was to choose… Read More »When Black Mainers Joined the National Black Freedom Movement
by Andy O’Brien Photo: Canva In the early 1830s, there were only about one or two hundred Black voters in Portland, but because of their concentration in a city of roughly 13,000 people, they exerted political influence. As historian Van… Read More »The Power of Portland’s Black Voters
by Andy O’Brien When the call went out for the first state convention of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society, in August of 1834, abolitionists around the world were celebrating the official emancipation of 800,000 enslaved people in the British West Indies.… Read More »When British Abolitionist George Thompson Clashed with Augusta’s “Mobocracy”
By Andy O’Brien Originally appeared in the July, 2023 issue of The Bollard On Aug. 16, 1834, Maine abolitionists put out the call to anti-slavery activists across the state to come to Augusta on the third Wednesday of October to… Read More »The Founders of Maine’s Early Anti-Slavery Organizations
By Andy O’Brien Originally appeared in the June, 2023 issue of The Bollard Colby College President Jeremiah Chaplin In June of 1833, the rabble-rousing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison arrived at Waterville College (now known as Colby) for the last stop… Read More »Radical Mainers: Woke Students Clash with Conservative Waterville College
