Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100f e b r u a r y / m a r c h 2 0 1 7 5 9 alan Karchmer/nmaahc in the Nation’s New Attic Maine ing, and they finally got their museum.” They. This reminds us that we all have some work to do. The Museum’s galleries are deftly orga- nized. Past at the bottom, future at the top. We start at the very beginning, Level C3, three floors below ground level, and see how the Triangle Trade worked, and still works. After all, Portland’s sugar refineries made us the sixth biggest port on the East Coast when people were enslaved. Was Portland part of that deadly Trian- gle? Of course it was, and the effects linger, the good with the painful. On the wall of a multimedia exhibit is a quote from Wil- liam Cowper, 1788: “I admit I am sickened at the purchase of slaves...but I must be mumm, for how could we do without sug- ar or rum?” The variation of that I heard while growing up and going to Deering High School in Portland was, ‘The South is so backward. We’d have never done any- thing like that here. And it’s not our problem, being so far north. There are al- most no blacks here.’ None that ‘we’ had the eyes to see, any- way. African Americans have contribut- ed so much to the making of everything we think of as American, and always have been a driving part of the making of Maine. The enslaved often weren’t listed on ship manifests. Freed men and Free- men were often not identified by race ear- ly on, and so shared invisibility. All Main- ers benefited and therefore still benefit to- day. Maine’s very statehood was born of an ugly compromise that granted our ad- mission to the Union at the cost of un- restricted slavery in Missouri. The KKK thrived here in the 1920s. None of this was taught in the classroom. As we walk through this magnificent new museum, brilliant in its evolution, an- other museum starts to take shape in our heads–one that specifically showcases Maine’s history and Maine’s stake in it. Ma- con Bolling Allen, the first African Ameri- can lawyer ever to pass the bar exam, lived in Maine. John Russwurm, the third Afri- can American ever to graduate from college, went to Bowdoin and was pals with fellow undergrads Longfellow and Hawthorne. He started the first African American newspa- per in the United States, in New York. His house is across the street from Cheverus High School. The Abyssinian Church on the East End is of national significance. Clearly, Portland’s soaring prospects in the 19th century, built and barreled on the rum trade, were built on the backs of en- slaved people as the Old Port shot up in the 1850s, and even when we rebuilt it so quickly after the Great Fire in 1866. The slave trade ensured Portland’s glory days. For a great historical novel featuring a Portlander’s African American point of view, read Pyrrhus Venture by William Da-