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Hundreds gathered in Portland on Thursday to remember Maine civil rights leader Gerald Talbot, who passed away this month at age 94.
State officials, friends and family members celebrated Talbot’s legacy as a champion for human rights and anti-discrimination legislation.
They described Talbot as someone who pushed the door open for others to follow and continue the work of advocating for Indigenous people, people of color and others.
That work, they said, is not over.
Donna Loring of the Penobscot Nation said the Wabanaki people watched as Talbot was elected Maine’s first Black legislator in the early 1970s. She described that moment as a “turning point” for Maine.
“We didn’t fully know, but Jerry provided the spark that ignited hope among the Wabanaki people, hope that maybe we too could break free from the cycle of poverty, exclusion and state control that had defined so much of our history,” said Loring, who served as a tribal representative to the Legislature.
Talbot represented a part of Portland for three terms in the Maine House of Representatives. He sponsored many pieces of anti-discrimination legislation, including a law to protect gay and lesbian Mainers under the state’s Human Rights Act, the first of its kind.
Talbot also pushed for the state’s Fair Housing Act of 1965, an anti-discrimination law that preceded passage of the federal law. He and his wife, Anita, won the first case under the state law.
He was among several Mainers to join the 1963 March on Washington where he witnessed Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial.
Surrounded by her three sisters, Rachel Talbot Ross, who represents Portland as a state senator in the Legislature, recalled their father’s Volkswagen van, which he filled with artifacts that he had collected over the years documenting Black history. He drove the van around the state to schools, libraries and the State House.
“He wanted future generations to learn, to ask questions and to understand that Black history is Maine history,” Talbot Ross said. “And Maine history is American history.”
Talbot’s collection was eventually donated to the University of Southern Maine. The university also established a fellowship in his name to examine race.
In 2020, the Portland Public School Department renamed Riverton Elementary as the Gerald E. Talbot Community School. One of his great-grandsons attended the school and helped cut the ribbon at the renaming ceremony, said Walter Phillips, one of Talbot’s grandsons.
Portland Mayor Mark Dion said he met Talbot for the first time 40 years ago. Dion was a young detective at the Portland Police Department and said Talbot served as his “tutor” on the Black experience during their drives together.
Dion recalled a time when he and Talbot met with a family that had been a victim of a hate crime.
“He chose to stand in their pain and understood exactly what that family felt in their souls,” Dion said. “Jerry’s steady, unyielding presence anchored that family. Darkness had trespassed, and Jerry was there because a good man doesn’t walk away.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
