News Releases

USM'S African American Collection of Maine Mounts Exhibit for Black History Month

January 21, 2005

This year's Black History Month will be one to remember in USM's Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine. It marks the first February that the African American Collection of Maine, part of the Sampson Center, will mount its annual exhibition in its new home space located on the sixth floor of the Glickman Family Library on Forest Avenue, Portland.

The exhibition, "Old Wine in New Wine Skins: Bringing Out the African American Collection of Maine," will be on display from Tuesday, February 1, through Thursday, March 31. Materials in the exhibition lobby can be viewed any time during the Glickman Family Library's operating hours. Operating hours for the Sampson Center are from 1-5 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and by appointment by calling 780-4275. The exhibition name, borrowing words from a Biblical parable, refers to the historic collection being exhibited in its new home space.

Maureen Elgersman Lee, faculty scholar for the collection, and Jessica Hill, a USM history senior from Steep Falls, are the exhibition's co-curators. Artifacts selected for display include studio photographs that reinforce Black standards of beauty; a variety of rare books; visual objects relating to the Ku Klux Klan and Women of the Ku Klux Klan in Maine; and other materials documenting African American political, civic, and social involvement in Maine.

"'Old is new again,' as these pieces are shown in a new space and in new configurations," says Elgersman-Lee. "As a result, there are strengths emerging within the Collection that are useful to students, teachers, and scholars. These strengths might also encourage future donations that would increase, even further, the degree to which people across the state have embraced the Collection."

The African American Collection of Maine was founded in 1995 with the donation of the Gerald E. Talbot Collection--a diverse compilation of photographs, books, magazines, papers, visual objects, and memorabilia--and was closely followed by the Anchor of the Soul Collection. Subsequent gifts include the Harold E. Richardson Papers, the Lee Forest Collection, the Frederick D. William Papers, the Visible Black History Archives, and the "Home Is Where I Make It" Oral History Collection. Other private donations have been made as well.

>more news releases