Maine Race/Labor History Talk
Black Mainers and the Struggle for Freedom and Equality in the 19th Century
Presentation with Andy O’Brien – March 20, 6:30-7:30pm on Zoom
Since the Colonial era, African Americans in Maine have fought for liberation, first by resisting their enslavement and petitioning for their emancipation and then by joining national movements for abolitionism and civil rights.
Join Maine AFL-CIO Communications Director Andy O’Brien on Wednesday, March 20 at 6:30pm on Zoom as he traces the roots of Maine’s racial justice movement from slavery to its formal abolition in 1865, covering the role of Black Mainers in electoral politics in the antebellum period and grassroots organizing in the abolitionist and National Colored Convention movements.
Learn about influential Black Mainers like activist Reuben Ruby, intellectual Robert Benjamin Lewis, pioneering journalist John Brown Russwurm, abolitionist George H. Black, and the radical preacher Reverend William C. Monroe, who joined the militant abolitionist John Brown’s movement to establish a revolutionary government of formerly enslaved people in the Appalachian Mountains.
A short business meeting will follow the presentation, adjourning at 8:00pm