Juneteenth Lecture: Portland’s Historic Black Community + the Underground Railroad

Portland’s Historic Black Community and the Underground Railroad: Historian Seth Goldstein offers tours of the Portland Freedom Trail and has translated some of his tour content for this presentation. Using artwork from the PMA collection Seth will provide an examination of Portland’s historic Black community. Community members purchased their homes in the Munjoy Hill section of the city and built a house of worship; the Abyssinian Meeting House. Many of these individuals found work as mariners or in shoreside jobs related to the maritime trades. Audience members will learn how Portland’s 19th Century Black community helped self-emancipators from the American South disguise themselves and make their way to Canada. These efforts became increasingly important following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Seth Goldstein received his bachelor’s degree in European History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his master’s degree in World History from Northeastern University. His research interests include the historic North Atlantic fishery, global piracy, New England shipwrecks and lighthouses, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Vietnam War era counterculture. He is a member of the Atlantic Black Project; a grass roots non-profit that examines Maine and New England’s marginalized history and the regions complicity with the economics of enslavement. Seth is the Director of the Cushing’s Point Museum at Bug Light Park and is the Director of Development for the South Portland Historical Society.