I have to start by saying I’m a bit of a fan of the Talbot family.

Gerald Talbot, born in 1931, is an 8th generation Mainer and veteran who grew up in Bangor. He literally wrote the book on the history of Black Mainers along with H. H. Price – Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People. The book starts from before the landing of the Mayflower and continues to the 21st century. In the book you’ll find many of his personal memories, including the housing discrimination his family faced:

“I had my own humiliating experience in trying to get housing for my family in Portland. In 1957, I found an apartment for us to move into after fixing it up. So, for several days, friends of ours worked doing that, when one day the landlord came by for a visit to see how we were doing. The next day I received a phone call on my job and it was the landlord telling me that we would have to move. He said that several of his neighbors had told him that they didn’t want Negroes in the neighborhood, so he felt that he was forced to ask us to move. So before we moved in, we were thrown out because of racism and discrimination and the color of our skins. I am a light-skin black person, which is why I was able to secure this rent; the landlord thought I was white.”

Gerald has been a strong civil rights leader his entire life. He participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and in 1965 lead the way for the passage of the Fair Housing Bill, which addressed the discrimination faced by black people seeking rental housing. In 1964, he became the first president of the Maine NAACP and was tireless in assuring Black Mainers were not stereotyped by the media. In 1968, he and his wife, Anita Cummings Talbot (whose family also has a rich history in Maine), took a landlord to court for discrimination and won in Superior Court. Also in 1968 Maine Governor Kenneth Curtis appointed Talbot to a Human Rights task force. In 1972 he became the first African American elected to the state Legislature, as an at-large representative of the city of Portland, and later served on the state Board of Education.

Gerald had a large collection of black history artifacts and used to tour with them in a van to schools, places of worship, and events. He donated his collection to the University of Southern Maine. The donation inspired the creation of the Maine Collection and the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity, and his collection is now the foundation of the African American Collection of Maine. USM bestowed him with an honorary Doctor in Humane Letters degree in 1995 and dedicated an auditorium in his name. More recently, USM honored his extraordinary life and work with the creation of a new teaching fellow, who is examining race in Maine.

Recently, the City of Portland renamed the Riverton School in his honor. His family who continues his legacy for racial equity and fairness was there to help him cut the ribbon. His daughter, Rachel Talbot Ross, is the first female African American to be elected to Maine Legislature.