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Mr. Edgar Anderson
"I grew up seeing that on television and not seeing it in my neighborhood and wondering 'wow, things look pretty bad,' you know, down in Mississippi and down South. It wasn't until 1975 when I actually lived in the South that I got an opportunity to see and have an experience where I was involved in something like that."
"Well, the community groups that I've been involved with, I've been involved with the NAACP here in Portland. I've been on the executive committee for about 4 years. I've been involved in moving the NAACP from an organization that wasn't very financially stable. I helped move them from that point to the point now where the NAACP can stand on its own financially. So I've done that with leadership in that group. I also have been a vice president of the NAACP for the New England area conference, which is the five states in New England. I'm a vice-president in that group. I'm not very religious. I don't go to church. My kids don't go to church; I don't make them go to church. Even though my father's mother was a preacher, like Reverend Lawson."
"When I was a West Point, some other Black cadets and I were the first people to bring a Black rock concert to West Point. That really opened some people's eyes up there to the fact that young officers were going to have to lead and be leaders of Black people, but they had never really known any Black people or knew how to deal with them. So the concert was one way to kick off the training that took place where we started the first racial awareness training program at West Point. It took a lot of leadership to get that through the whole system, and get everybody to accept it, and pull it off. So that was another point of leadership."
"I'm still involved in the Civil Rights Movement."
"Well, you see, I wasn't back there in the '60s carrying banners and holding flags, but I've been in the Civil Rights Movement since I've been an adult, in one way or another. I mean, I feel like I'm in the Civil Rights Movement here in Portland, Maine. Because whenever I see civil rights that are violated I want to, you know, have some part in trying to make it right."
Mr. Edgar Anderson (Male; age 51; born 1950 in Chicago suburb called Harvey)
Keywords: family demography, Black Families, Maine
Full Length Interview: Home is Where I Make It: Anderson, Edgar
Publication Date
2021
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Edgar, "Anderson, Edgar Quotes Transcript" (2021). We Exist Series 2: Quotes. 8.
https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/we-exist-exhibit2-quotes/8
