Welcome to the “We Exist” exhibit. In this section we present audio recordings from the oral history project “’Home Is Where I Make It’: African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine”. The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of the “Home Is Where I Make It” project was to highlight Black residents’ history and struggle for community in southern Maine in both their formal organizational memberships and day-to-day activities. The audio recordings provide support for some of the themes presented in the interview quotes related to how Black residents in Maine conceptualize various aspects of family.
Where possible, interviewee names and a corresponding theme are attached to a photo. If you click on the theme/name, you will be taken to a page with the recorded audio clip. On that page, there will be a brief biographical data description of the interviewee, the timestamp of the audio recording, a written transcript of the audio recording, keywords, and recommended citation. The themes in the audio recordings include:
- Family Demography
- Childhood Experiences
- Children's Experiences
- Parenting Attitudes and Behaviors
- Holidays and Family Traditions
Childhood experiences refer to the experiences of the interviewees whereas children’s experiences refer to the experiences of the interviewees’ offspring. Themes can be searched by typing in your search terms into the search bar in the top left of the page. Interview quotes are available here.
All works in these collections are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Childhood Experiences: Mr. James Mathews
Maureen Elgersman Lee
“Well, as a child I had a real good childhood as far as I'm concerned. I lived with my aunt and uncle; their names were Hope Matthews and Kenneth Matthews. My uncle was an electrician, and he had problems getting electrical jobs until he finally had to go to work for C.H. Robinson, which is a paper company. As a child, I lived on Hall Street in South Portland, and I've lived all my life in South Portland. And we had a house on the end of, almost on the end of the street that my parents built. And we had three rooms that were finished, and then an addition has been built on the back end of it that would have given us, I believe, it was planned that we would have had another three rooms or so, including a bathroom. And at that time we did not have indoor plumbing and we did not really have hot water; we had to heat the hot water, you know, and we had no real bathtub situation at that time. We also had an outdoor, what they would call an outhouse type situation. So up until the time that the state took our home because I-295 was in the process of being built , so we were really blessed to have the state take our home because, you know, they gave us a small amount of money , of course , to move. And we finally moved from there when I was 15 to Bonny Bank Terrace in South Portland, which is off of Evans Street. But to go back to my childhood, we as children really lacked for nothing, as far as food clothing, and things of that nature. I remember getting a bicycle when I was about ten, you know. But my parents, who were my aunt and uncle really, in real life, went without so that we could have some of the things that people would probably take for granted today.”
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Childhood Experiences: Ms. Lucille Young
Anab Osman
“Well, I'd have to start from way back, you know. I'd have to tell some of the story the way I really know it. I was born on a plantation they called the Latham Plantation, and my mother got sick and went into the hospital. And my mother died, and we never saw her again. So we don't know what happened-where they buried her or what happened. So we had to leave from that plantation. We moved to another plantation called the Chamber plantation, and we lived there for quite a few years, I don't remember. And the man came and told my father, says 'Your wife has died.' Then my father came back inside and told us that 'Your mom has died, but we can't bring her home-we don't have money.' So that's all we know-we never heard from our mother again. So we lived on the Latham plantation, to the Wallace plantation, to the Walker plantation, to the Armstrong Plantation, and to the Johnson Plantation. I lived on about eight different plantations from the late 20s to the late 40s…”
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Children’s Experiences: Mr. Rupert Richardson
Chan Prum
“I think it was a good experience. The only problem that my two oldest boys had when they left Maine and went down to Atlanta, it was the cultural shock, because don’t forget up here in Maine, Maine is quote the whitest state in the nation. And all of a sudden-growing up and having all these white friends, going out, you know, having a few pops with them. And all of a sudden you go down to Atlanta, Georgia and you walk into a nightclub and they’re all Black. Well up here you walk into a nightclub and they’re all white. And it was a culture shock which eventually my children got accustomed to.”
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Family Demography: Mr. James Mathews
Maureen Elgersman Lee
"Oh. We have two children who still live in Portland. The oldest girl, Sylvia, she's married and has two children. My son, Dennis, still lives with us at the moment. He had moved out and found that the cost was too great at the moment so he moved back in. He's checking it out to see what he can do. We have one son, Robert James, Jr., who lives in Connecticut. I don't' know why I can't come up with a name. I can't think of the name. That's understandable because I do that all the time. But he lives in Connecticut, and he's married and he has two boys. We have two other daughters, Priscilla and Jacqueline, that live in the Norfolk, Virginia, area. Jackie has two children and Priscilla has three children."
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Family Demography: Mr. James Sheppard
Sanela Zukic
“Okay, my family. I have three boys and a girl. I've been married twice. And when I married the second time-I had one son the first marriage-when I remarried, my wife had a daughter, so that made two children right off the bat. And then I had three more children after her. And that comes up to five, right? They all started school in New York City. They all attended public school in New York City until I moved up here. In 1971 I moved to Maine. And they transferred to the local schools in Westbrook; they completed their school in Westbrook. They all went on to college one at a time. And finally the last daughter completed college up at Bates College a few years ago. I attended all the graduations, but I really couldn't even tell you the dates. One son graduated from USM and the youngest boy graduated from MIT-Massachusetts Institute of Technology-in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Starting with him. He is a professor now in Alabama teaching aerospace engineering; his name is Eric. E-R-I-C. The other boy lives in Kittery, and he's into marketing; that's Robert. R-O-B-E-R-T. He's into marketing. Unfortunately, our daughter passed away in Florida. She contracted something and just couldn't handle it, and she passed away two years ago in Florida. I forgot to mention her before, that's because she passed away. And I have a son in New York City who's a horticulturalist-that's a form of agriculture-in New York City. His name is Arthur. A-R-T-H-U-R…”
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Family Demography: Mr. Rupert Richardson
Chan Prum
“Well, I’m from a family of-well-I have 4 brothers and 2 sisters. All my brothers and sisters were born and raised here in Portland. My mother’s from Kingston, Jamaica, and my father was from Spartanburg, South Carolina. They met down at Old Orchard Beach, where they got married. And they proceeded to have children, and seven children was the result of their union.”
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Holidays and Family Traditions: Mr. James Mathews
Maureen Elgersman Lee
“Well, basically I would say that we all try to get together. Say we go down to Connecticut to my son's house and fellowship with his family. My daughter and her family would go down also. And they would come up here And Christmas is usually held over at our house because we seem to have at the moment the largest space and it was easier to get everybody together at our house, where we live now. We go to my daughter's house for Thanksgiving and other special days and fellowship over there and so on, and just generally have a good time. So we travel to the various homes, you know. Since I live in South Portland, my daughter lives in Portland, and my son lives in Connecticut, we're closer together. And then my daughters will come up from either Florida or Norfolk and they'll visit in the summer, or one of my daughters came back home for Christmas. So we do a lot of getting together.”
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Holidays and Family Traditions: Mr. Richard Tarrence
Rachel Talbot-Ross
“Just the traditional holidays. I mean, we had little things we’d do in the traditional holidays. Like, you know, at New Years it was the family gathering and the black-eyed peas and stuff. And I didn’t become aware of Kwanzaa until many years later-just recently. And I don’t do it as a family celebration, but I do celebrate it with my church family. We have programs to celebrate Kwanzaa. But to answer your question: I had nothing specific other than just the traditional family gatherings that as a family we always held and to eat some traditional foods that we always ate.”
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Parenting Attitudes and Behaviors: Mr. James Mathews
Maureen Elgersman Lee
“Well, basically we provided a good roof over their head and they had plenty to eat. [laughter] We attempted to keep them clothed and so on and so forth. I believe as far as their schooling is concerned, they did not choose to go to school. Like my son is a firefighter, so when he finally decided what he wanted to do, he was able to go to school on his own to become qualified. I have another daughter that when she was living in Florida she went to school down there. In fact, I have two children that lived in Florida for a while and they went to school in Florida for other education, to gain knowledge in that sense. So basically I haven't really provided college education for them because they at the time didn't require it or didn't seem to be needing it at the moment. We have helped them in other ways, you know, financially and other ways to keep them going ahead.”
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Parenting Attitudes and Behaviors: Mr. James Sheppard
Sanela Zukic
“My experiences raising children? Well, seeing to it that they attended school and seeing to it that they did their homework. That sort of thing. That's standard I guess; regular stuff, I guess. I don't know how to answer that. Between my wife and I, we saw to it that they did a lot of reading. And we did a lot of traveling. We did a lot of traveling to the Caribbean and South America, and we took them with us. In addition to seeing to it that they did their work at school. And they excelled, especially the one that's a professor now. The youngest one gained. You know, you learn a lot. You don't know anything with your first son; you get better as you have more children. By the time number five was born, we knew exactly how to channel things. And I think that's why he came out number one. With my first son, I didn't learn anything. [laughter] I shouldn't say that; he's the horticulturalist in New York.”
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Parenting Behaviors and Attitudes: Mr. Richard Tarrence
Rachel Talbot-Ross
“There is no question that my upbringing and my background is a solid rock in my life. I mean, my mother’s words of wisdom, my father—very gentle people. Very loving and honest people, and they had a drive and a stick-to-it-iveness that I inherited obviously. I’ve never been one to waver a lot. You see that from my job histories; I stay on one job, pretty loyal to that. I just taught my kids to maintain a course, to not fight back in anger, but to fight back if threatened or injured or something like that. Try to teach them to think and not, you know, not to hate. You know, to understand where your challenges are coming from, to understand who you are as a human being. They are very aware of their blackness; they love who they are. They’ve been able to survive, and they’ve been able to survive through times when I was very hurt by it, but I couldn’t show them that side of it. You know, I could only show them the side that each day brings a new horizon; that they needed to continue and be who they are. I think that served me in good stead. I’ve always been able to do what I wanted to do and achieve what I wanted to achieve. There were moments I wanted to lash out and you know, just go off, and you can’t do that. I think trying to help instill that.”
