Diversity Tour
In 2019 I prepared and led a diversity tour for Department of Labor employees meeting here in Portland. This pulls a lot of material together. You could use it for a self-guided tour, or just learn a lot about Portland by reading it.
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First Parish Church
In 1832 abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison spoke in the church to 2,000 people on his first Maine anti-slavery tour. In 1842 First Parish was the site of a pro-slavery riot when radical abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster was nearly murdered for criticizing New England’s role in promoting, perpetuating and profiting from slavery. A plaque inside the church honors church member Prentiss Mellen who became the first president of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.*
The granite building was constructed in 1825 and 26, to replace the previous wooden structure, known as “Old Jerusalem.” Old Jerusalem had survived the 1775 bombardment and burning of Falmouth, and was the site of the signing of Maine’s Constitution. Because of its granite construction this church survived the 1866 fire. In relation to our theme of diversity, First Parish is a Unitarian Universalist Church, with progressive ideals of inclusion and service.
To return briefly to Stephen Symonds Foster’s criticism, the only person ever to be hung by the United States for slave trading was a ship captain from Portland. On his fourth slave-trading voyage, Nathaniel Gordon traded 150 hogsheads of whiskey for 897 human beings (most were children) in the Congo. Bound for Cuba, he was almost immediately spotted and captured by the US Navy. He was executed in 1861. Gordon was not an anomaly, Portland trade had long involved carrying slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, even after the Piracy Act of 1820.
Women in Portland
The 1880 census shows women in non-farm employment in the Portland area working in three areas: domestic labor, needle trades, and factory work. They worked in garment factories on Middle Street, shoe shops, canning fish and vegetables near the waterfront, Curtis’s chewing gum factory, and the Star Match factory on Commercial Street. At the bottom rung of the industrial status ladder, they worked at rag sorting.
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About 150 women worked in the printing industry on Exchange Street.
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At 149 Middle Street 60 or 70 women worked for the AH Berry Shoe Co. at 148 Middle Coronet Mfg. employed 206 women as stitchers in 1910.
The Police Station stands nearby on Middle Street. Portland’s first Police Matron Mary J. Raymond, was appointed in 1884 because at least 300 women were arrested for drunkenness in the previous year. The first female officer, Elizabeth McDonough, served from 1921 to 1947. Her mother Mary was a long-time Police Matron.
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At 375 Fore Street women did seasonal piecework at RK Dyer making men’s clothing.
The painted sign for Zeitman’s Grocery remains at 338 Fore Street, Bessie Zeitman (1881-1978), a Russian Jew, was long an active philanthropist in Portland. Many women worked at Curtis and Sons Chewing Gum from 1866 on.
At the Customs House, the first woman employee, Rose Alice Henry, began as a stenographer in 1899. Later she became secretary to the Inspector.
Lucia Cormier was appointed Customs Collector by JFK and served until 1974. She served six terms in the House of Representatives, and was the first woman Minority Leader in 1959. When she challenged the incumbent Margaret Chase Smith for a Senate seat in 1960, it was the first such race between two women. Time Magazine ran a cover story on it.
Smith was a Republican Representative from 1940 to 1948, and served in the Senate from 1949 to 1972. She may be most famous for her Declaration of Conscience (an anti-McCarthy speech that never mentions McCarthy by name) in 1950. She was the first woman to serve in both Houses of Congress, and the first woman to represent Maine in either. She ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1964 and was the first woman placed in nomination for the Presidency at a major party’s convention.
Beverly Dodge
In 1952, Margaret Chase Smith intervened with a Washington D.C. hotel on behalf of Beverly Dodge. Dodge, a senior at Portland High School, learned that the hotel her class was to stay at during the class trip refused to accommodate her. After some publicity, and Smith’s intervention, the hotel reversed its decision. Dodge, in effect, desegregated the hotel.
She went on to earn Master’s degrees in Nursing and Education from Columbia, and had a long career as a clinician and administrator.
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Franklin Street, once called Fiddle Lane was the site of bars and whorehouses. 57 Commercial Street, now the Hilton Garden Inn, was once the location of Big Annie’s, one of the most popular Portland whorehouses in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. The story is told that proprietors of whorehouses in the area place a red geranium in the window when a new “girl” joined their workforce.
During WWII young women flocked to Portland, some for employment across the river in the shipyards or in other industries in the area. The city had to address a “Girl Problem,” as young women, not prostitutes but enthusiastic amateurs, were blamed for the spread of diseases.
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Jewish Immigration
Two million Jews fled Eastern Europe for the US between 1881 and 1924. By 1930 there were about 5,500 Jewish Mainers. Those in Portland made a small, but significant contribution to the business, cultural, and intellectual community. Today there are about 14,000 Jewish Mainers.
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See site descriptions in Portland Freedom Trail Brochure and on markers.
Blacks in Portland
The 1800 census indicates about 100 blacks living in Portland. Black men would have come here as sailors, and most were maritime laborers. They formed about 3% of the city’s population. That percentage has never measured higher since. A hundred years later, during the city’s boom years fewer than 300 blacks lived here. During the 1800’s blacks came to Portland from elsewhere in the US, from Canada, the Caribbean, Cape Verde, and England, giving the Portland black community a cultural texture and diversity different from that found elsewhere in the US.
Though few in numbers, black Portlanders have had a significant impact in the city, and on the country. As the Freedom Trail markers show, the abolition movement and Underground Railway activities were not only due to white reformers. Reuben Ruby stands out as a forceful organizer of the black community. The Freedom Trail Guide says of him:
Ruby (1798-1878) was the foremost African American antislavery activist and Underground Railroad conductor in Portland. He was one of the founders of the Abyssinian Church and funded its acquisition and construction. He was born in Gray, Maine. Reuben Ruby worked directly with William Lloyd Garrison and supported the start of Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper in this country.*
Reuben Ruby’s son, William Wilberforce Ruby, discovered the fire at Dequio’s boat shop on Portland’s waterfront on July 4, 1866, and gave the alarm. As the fire spread across the city, he was actively involved in battling it. He’s credited with saving the Abyssinian Meeting House by covering the roof with water-soaked blankets (though the entire block was actually spared). Afterward Ruby advocated for a modern alarm system and equipment, and for fire hydrants -- all reforms that were instituted in the aftermath.
Ruby, a grocer and restaurateur, was a political ward leader, and became a city committee member. He joined the Fire Department in 1884, became a captain of his fire company, and was named Assistant Engineer of the department. He served from 1888 to 1890, when the political power shifted and he was retired.
Within a decade, in 1898 the steamer Portland sank off Cape Ann with about 200 people aboard. Among them were many of the prominent members of the Abyssinian Meeting House. The congregation fell on hard times, and the Meeting House became an apartment building.
Waves of Immigrants
In that time period one of several waves of reactionary political change occurred, serving to help the white protestant elite retain power in the city in the face of rising immigration. In this case, the nearby town of Deering, a popular suburb for upper-class whites, was reabsorbed by Portland. This particular move came in a time of significant immigration from central Europe.
Earlier political reactions were stimulated by Irish immigrants. Irish immigration to Portland began in the late 1700’s, but famine migration rose in the late 1840’s and gained strength. By 1860 Irish were ⅔ of the city’s foreign-born residents, and 11% of the total population. By 1900, first- and second-generation Irish were 15% of the city’s population of 50,000. Gorham’s Corner, near the waterfront, warehouses, and factories, was the most heavily Irish and densely settled area of Portland. The Irish Catholic church of St. Dominic’s on State Street was built after 1833. It is now the Irish Heritage Center.
The side of Munjoy Hill east of India Street became densely-settled in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, with Irish, Canadian, Blacks (as detailed above), Eastern European Jews, and Italians. These neighborhoods were described as filthy. Irish immigrants were blamed for crime, drunkenness, disease, and insanity.
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However, the Catholics of the city were able to get the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception built nearby. The second Bishop of the Diocese of Maine, James Healy, is now noted as the first African American Roman Catholic Bishop in the US. His father was from Ireland and his mother was of mixed race and a slave.
In 1775 the British bombarded and burned Portland, then known as Falmouth. One of the few buildings to survive was Alice Greele’s tavern. It served as the seat of government for the next year. The story is that Greele used a frying pan to scoop up any heated shot that hit her building, saving it from burning. Meanwhile most of Falmouth’s residents had fled, and militia from nearby Gorham came in not to protect, but to loot. How Greele preserved her building from the British who came ashore, and the looting militia is not recorded.
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Armenian Immigration
In 1896 the Yeghoian family fled Turkey to escape a massacre. They eventually resettled in Portland through efforts of Lillian Stevens of the WCTU. Stevens had been assistant to WCTU leader Frances Willard. Stevens served as President of the Maine WCTU from 1878 to 1914. After Willard’s death in 1898, Stevens became President of the National WCTU, serving until her own death in 1914.
By 1908 25 Armenian families lived in an area of the Bayside around Franklin Street.
In the 1920’s a Portland newspaper published a photo of three Armenian immigrant boys with a caption calling them three arguments for Americanization education.
House Island in Casco Bay
House Island was an immigration inspection and quarantine station, an alternative to Ellis Island. In 1913 26, 421 people arrived in the US there. This view is of Fort Scammel, which dates to the War of 1812. The buildings on the other end of the island are remnants of the Immigration station.
The KKK in Maine
The KKK had an extensive presence in Maine in the 1920’s, actively intimidating the Black, Jewish, Catholic, and immigrant communities. In Portland they supported a 1923 referendum eliminating the popularly-elected mayor and reducing the size of the city council, concentrating power in the hands of the Protestant elite. Maine Governor Percival P. Baxter denounced the Klan as “an insult and an affront to American Citizens.” He was forced out of power in the Republican party, and Owen Brewster, supported by the KKK, was elected Governor in 1924.
Landfill, Slum Clearance, and Urban Renewal
Portland’s economy boomed at the same time the Irish famine migration occurred. Commercial Street was built and rail lines laid along the waterfront on landfill, between 1840 and 1850 as the city’s population doubled from 15,000 to 30,000. Some of the landfill came from the west side of Munjoy Hill. Some of that land was undeveloped, but some of it was covered with hovels, bars, and whorehouses. Portland’s first official slum clearance project came decades later in the area between Pearl and India Streets, Commercial and Middle Streets. The Curtis gum factory, now Hub furniture, is the only building to survive that project. In the 1960’s about 130 buildings were demolished, and several streets eliminated to turn Franklin Street into Franklin Arterial. Associated urban renewal removed blocks of residences in the nearby Bayside area. One victim of the project was the Armenian community in the area. The Armenians dispersed throughout the city and region.
Today a memorial to the community and to the victims of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey stands across Cumberland Avenue from the Cathedral.
Modern-day Immigrants in Portland
Immigrants contributed $1.2 billion to the Portland metropolitan area’s GDP in 2016 and paid $133 million in federal income taxes. Immigrants are responsible for 75% of the population growth in the area. 12.8% of immigrants had advanced degrees, about the same percentage as US-born citizens. More than half of immigrants and refugees in the Portland area were naturalized citizens.
In the past decade the black population of Portland has approximately tripled (to around 9%). I’ve used “black” throughout this document because of the range of places blacks came to Portland from throughout history, and because today there are more Africans in Portland than African-Americans.
Google Map of our Tour Route
Primary Sources, and for more information:
Conforti, Joseph (ed.). Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England. University Press of New England: Hanover NH, 2005.
Maine Historical Society. https://www.mainehistory.org/
“Portland Freedom Trail: A Self-guided Walking Tour.” Walking Tour Map. https://www.mainehistory.org/PDF/walkingtourmap.pdf
Working Women of the Old Port: A Portland Women’s History Trail. Department of History, University of Southern Maine, 2003.
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