Maine historian Bob Greene (left) with Delilah Poupore, the head of Heart of Biddeford and member of the local chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice. Eloise Goldsmith / Courier
BIDDEFORD – There’s an interesting story from the time that the celebrated African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass visited Biddeford in 1855.
Douglass went into a local barbershop hoping to get a shave, but was turned away by the barber, who was Black himself – a person named Mr. Bunker who was originally from Ethiopia.
Mr. Bunker was afraid he would lose his white customers if he served Douglass, according to historian and Portland native Bob Greene.
In researching the episode, Greene said that he discovered that Mr. Bunker eventually moved to Canada. “What I found interesting is that Mr. Bunker is listed as white in the Census, both in the United States, here in Biddeford, and … (in) Canada,” Greene said.
The anecdote – a window into America’s complicated racial and ethnic politics – was one of many insights shared during the Biddeford Saco Area Black History Walking Tour on May 4.
The tour, organized by the local chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) – an organization that mobilizes white people to advance racial justice – served as a celebration of the area’s Black history, an unearthing of the area’s complicity in slavery, and a chance for local students to engage in local history. The downtown community and business development groups Heart of Biddeford and Saco Main Street also helped organize the event.
The walk was held the same day as “Jane’s Walk” – an annual festival held in some communities that’s inspired by the community activist Jane Jacobs.
“The tour holds a special place within the national celebration of community activist Jane Jacobs, aptly fitting into the framework of ‘Jane’s Walk’ on May 4th,” according to a press release sent out by one of the organizers.
Greene, the historian, was joined by Anatole Brown, the program and education manager at the Saco Museum and Richmon Victorino, a junior at Biddeford High School in leading the over 80-person crowd through the area’s history.
Victorino was looped into the tour by his former AP World History teacher, Andrew Reddy, who had Victorino and two other students prepare materials for the tour.
“I did not know that we indulged in the slave trade this heavily in the mills,” said Victorino, who called the research process enlightening and interesting.
The cotton mills established in the 19th century in Biddeford would produce fabric from cotton picked by enslaved people.
Anatole Brown (left), education and program manager at the Saco Museum, and Richmon Victorino, a junior at Biddeford High School, guide listeners through a tour of local Black history. Eloise Goldsmith / Courier
“They did not solely produce high quality cotton, they also produced low quality cotton, also known as ‘Negro cloth,’ (which) was solely used (to create) essential clothing for slaves,” Victorino shared on the tour.
Reddy, who was at the tour, said that he and other teachers in his department put an emphasis on telling history through diverse perspectives.
“When we are introducing primary sources to students … I’m mindful of saying ‘where are the voices?’ Where were the women? Where are the Black voices? Where are the Asian voices? Where are the Native American voices”,” he said. “(I) try to find those in everything that we research.”
Anatole Brown of the Saco Museum also shared some more recent history during a portion of the tour.
Saco’s original name – Pepperrellborough – comes from William Pepperrell, a war hero and slave owner who in the early 1700s purchased land stretching from Kittery to where Portland stands today, according to Brown. Although Saco was renamed in 1805, the name Pepperell (spelled slightly differently) has stuck around.
In 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd, there was an effort to try to drop all Pepperell name associations (such as finding a new name for Pepperell Square in Saco) because the family owned slaves, though it was ultimately unsuccessful, Brown said.
Isaac Kinzambi, a Biddeford man who is originally from Africa (he declined to specify where in Africa, pointing out that country borders on the continent are largely a product of European colonialism), came for part of the tour with two friends who were visiting him from New York.
The three expressed that they wished more Black community members had turned out for the tour – the vast majority of attendees were white – but were still glad they had come.
“It’s important to know about Black people in Maine. It seems that we are few, but as we’ve learned here, we have been here for (a) long, long (time),” Kinzambi saod.
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