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Tommy Pinette is a graduate researcher in history at the University of Maine. His work concerns popular understandings of bilingual education and its influence on public support for Indigenous language revitalization.
A certain reality has haunted my reclamation of my Franco-American identity for years now. My grandfather’s grandfather immigrated to Fort Kent, in the 1870s to escape the deterioration of rural life in Eastern Québec and gain “une job salarié,” the crowning prize of immigration to America at the time. In other words, that ancestor of mine engaged in an immigrant experience identical to many of those targeted, harassed, assaulted, and detained by ICE. The Franco-American experience in Maine can help us understand the cyclical nature of attacking immigrants during times of great economic change.
Two years ago, I learned the infamous Ku Klux Klan exploded in popularity throughout Maine during its resurgence in the 1920s. Across the United States, the terrorist group amassed hundreds of thousands of new followers in a rather clever dissemblance as a community service and fraternal organization. At one point, in fact, approximately 30% of Maine’s native-born population were enrolled members of the KKK. Yet they did not target Somali-Americans, people on work visas, or permanent residents from Africa — they vehemently attacked the people we now call Franco-Americans.
Prominent Franco communities in Lewiston, Rumford, Old Town, Augusta, and Waterville, called “petits Canadas,” became targets of violence for the KKK. One local history of the Franco-American community of Old Town recounts a horrific stand-off at French Island: holding torches and weapons, a mob of angry klansmen attempted to cross the bridge onto the island in order to burn it down. Only the rapid efforts of men in the community to block the bridge physically kept the island from going up in flames.
And yet, I hear many of my Franco relatives talk poorly about immigrants. They repeat similar slogans to the ones President Donald Trump spreads about immigrants who come from Africa, particularly those from East Africa: “they shouldn’t be here … Somalia is not even a country” Animus defines how many Franco-Americans understand immigrants, the people who stand in the very same place their ancestors once stood a couple generations ago.
Do not forget that our white privilege came at a great historical cost in the forms of systemic French language suppression, decades of shameful stereotypes, and barriers to higher education. For almost 70 years, the state of Maine had a legislative policy of only offering public education in English. We must remember our ancestors, the memères and pepères who endured the same xenophobic insults immigrants in America face today.
One must remember that the restriction of immigration only became systemic in the United States after the Immigration Act of 1924, which capped the number of immigrants permitted to enter the U.S. (often according to deeply racist standards). By this time, vibrant Franco-American communities were already established in Maine’s milltowns,
It was and remains common in the St. John Valley for Americans to marry Canadians across the border, or cross into the neighboring country for closer essential services. During the early years of the exodus from Québec’s rural farmlands to the industrial centers of New England, workers would work in mills for several years, then return to their relatives up north, then go back down to earn more. They did this for exactly the same reasons immigrants do today: to escape crushing poverty, political instability, and support their families. Your ancestors, too, were perhaps labelled “strike-breakers” and “stupid non-Americans” when they came to exchange their labor for the survival of their family.
Let us remember then that Franco-Americans in Maine today have infinitely more in common with African immigrants, whether they happen to speak French or not. We have a deep solidarity because we were once in their position. Now let us be humble and protect and support them in the ways our ancestors never received. The false zero-sum logic of English over French, real American over alien, cannot perpetuate any longer — it stops with us.
