Resistance In “Pioneer Territory”: The Maine NAACP and the Pursuit of Fair Housing Legislation

Abstract

While Charles Lumpkins details the organizational strategies of the civil-rights movement in Maine, Eben Miller focuses on the politics of fair housing. Outlining the “geography of segregation” in Maine, he describes the resistance to fair housing and the means by which the NAACP documented civil-rights violations, drafted legislation, built coalitions of concerned black and white citizens, and advanced the “moral and ethical responsibility ” of all Mainers to work for fair housing legislation. Mr. Miller, from Woolwich, graduated from Bates College in 1996. His article is based on research done for an honors thesis. Mr. Miller shared some of this material during a February 1996 University of Southern Maine symposium on Recent Scholarship on African-American History in Maine.