During one of the spring 2010 meetings that ultimately produced ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ current mission statement, the working group hit a roadblock.

“People were going back and forth about ways to look at something, and we were not coming to a consensus,� recalls Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and a member of the mission statement subcommittee.

Then a student, one of four in the 14-member group, spoke up. “He spoke passionately. He articulated the issue in terms that were clear to him and, I think, different for some of the rest of us, but that brought some insight into what we were talking about,� Hill says.

+The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Mission Statement

“And I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, it is terrific that this young person could really open this back up again.’ He created an opportunity for us to hear each other better. And I was so impressed by that.�

Adopted 10 years ago this month, the 77-word ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mission statement has become a touchstone for the college community. “Any college that leads its mission statement with an affirmation of the ‘emancipating potential of the liberal arts’ is a place I want to be,â€� Clayton Spencer said at the ceremony announcing her appointment as college president, in December 2011.

And as Hill’s story suggests, the statement resulted from a collaboration that, a decade later, remains a bright memory for the people involved. “Other than those wonderful moments I have with students, that process was the most delightful thing I’ve been associated with at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� says Rebecca Herzig, who chaired the Mission and Purposes Subcommittee that crafted the statement as part of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ decadal accreditation review.

“The committee was wonderful,â€� says Herzig, a professor of gender and sexuality studies. “Just a marvelous, committed, smart group that represented a lot of facets of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€�

Paul Gastonguay ’89, a committee member and the college’s tennis coach, agrees. “Everyone on the committee took great care to ensure that all of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ foundational and essential characteristics were authentically represented.â€�

Settling on a mission statement, whether existing or new, is an essential step in the college’s accreditation review. The statement is “the standard by which our performance on all the other standards is measuredâ€� during the review process, Herzig explains. (The 2000 review proceeded from the 1990 mission statement. And, yes, accreditation review is happening again now — but there are no plans to change the mission statement.)

Starting in February 2010 and facing a hard deadline — that May’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, whose approval would activate the statement — “we were working fast.� They had just three months not just to forge a draft, but to secure buy-in from “as many possible individuals and constituencies as we could,� Herzig explains.

“And we did it” — winning unanimous approval from the trustees.

From start to finish, in fact, the process was painstakingly consultative. “We sought out expertise wherever we could find it,� says Herzig.

“We talked to poets about tone and rhythm. We talked to classicists about various interpretations of the motto,â€� the Latin Amore ac Studio (“with ardor and devotionâ€�). “We talked to archivists about text we could mine for ideas, and to alumni about what stuck with them most about their ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ educations.â€�

To reach students, the team held a “Mission Night” in Commons, put a draft of the statement on napkin holders in the Den, ran ads in The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student, and got air time on campus radio station WRBC-FM. They even showed the draft to prospective families visiting campus, who were surprised “that we might care what they thought,” Herzig says.

The speed of creating the statement is all the more striking when you consider the thematic burden the Mission and Purposes Subcommittee had to bear. First of all, of course, the statement needed to, er, state what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ does: It “educates the whole person through creative and rigorous scholarship in a collaborative residential community.â€�

But there were aspirational values to assert and to align with that academic function — imperatives of equity and inclusion and of environmental sustainability, for instance, not to mention the hoped-for ethical posture of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduates. And there were guiding voices to summon forth, notably those of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ founder Oren Cheney (whose “college for coming timeâ€� gained an “s” for clarity — “coming timesâ€�) and of educator and civil rights leader Rev. Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920.

Mays, in fact, inspired one of the most-cited phrases in the mission statement. In Born to Rebel, his autobiography, he credited the college with “making it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man.â€� The mission statement, in turn, leads off with the college’s dedication to “the emancipating potential of the liberal arts.â€�

Equally powerful is “the transformative power of our differences,” which is not only a potent phrase in and of itself but, in its context in the mission statement, is revealed as the engine of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ enterprise.

Not surprisingly, “there was some real wrestling around the phrase ‘transformative power,’â€� as Leslie Hill recalls. The subcommittee needed to reconcile ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ historic invocation of diversity with a contemporary understanding of equity and inclusion. “It has a different meaning and, of course, different opportunities and possibilities,â€� Hill says. Moreover, they needed to make inclusiveness “more substantial — not simply to add ‘different faces’ to the community, but rather figure out how their presences enrich the community.â€�

Crafting the mission statement “gave us an opportunity to articulate and debate what we really think we’re trying to do.�

In short, there was a lot to load into a text that, the subcommittee believed, needed to be much shorter than its 283-word predecessor. “In its conciseness, the new statement gave us bite-sized values, priorities, and action steps that we could look at, understand, recite, and act upon,â€� says Marianne Cowan ’92, a member of the subcommittee who is now Associate Director of Program Design for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Center for Purposeful Work.

“And it gave us something to talk about to an external audience — especially, perhaps, the 17-year-old high school student — so they understand who we are and what’s important to us.”

It’s a testament to the subcommittee’s powers of perception, distillation, and balance that, 10 years later, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mission statement is so present in the daily life of the college. It has been the basis for admission essays and has informed course design. And its language resonates in campus proclamations large and small.

“I’m continually struck by how frequently and how divergently ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ people pull on the mission statement,â€� Herzig says. “People call on it as a tool to crack open conversations, to move forward with ambitions, projects, hopes. They use it to critique things that they find troubling. ‘Why aren’t we living up to the mission in this way?’â€�

Part of that utility, naturally, resides in those 77 words themselves. But the process itself of assembling them, she says, also influenced the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ culture. “It gave us an opportunity to articulate and debate what we really think we’re trying to do.â€�

One student on the subcommittee has carried insights from that process into his professional life. Now a postdoctoral research fellow at The New School for Social Research, Mikey Pasek ’12 earned a doctorate in social psychology at Penn State and now studies how people with different ethnic and religious identities cooperate or clash with one another across group lines.

Thanks to his mission statement experience, “I pay acute attention to the way that organizations and colleges describe their mission,� Pasek says. “Understanding how a school sees itself tells me a lot about whether it is the type of organization I’d want to dedicate myself to.�

It’s a harsh irony that the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mission statement’s 10th anniversary comes just as fate, in the form of COVID-19, is challenging the college and its guiding ethos in ways that could have hardly been predicted. For most of the past decade, for example, one of the statement’s concepts most taken for granted was ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ essential nature as a “residential community.â€� But no one’s taking it for granted these days.

Still, as another member of the 2010 mission statement subcommittee points out, that statement itself carries the seeds of its own re-invention. “It seems like a sort of romanticized or idealistic vision of who we are, but it’s really much more than that,â€� says Marcus Bruce ’77, professor of religious studies.

“As we try to get oriented in the midst of crisis, especially one that impacts us on so many different levels, it’s important to have that mission statement as a guide in terms of our history and our vision of ourselves at a particular period of time and what we envision for the future.

“I think it’s really important.â€�

In April 1854, a three-masted schooner, the Kate Brigham, set sail from New Orleans loaded with 150 bales of cotton grown by slaves on Southern plantations.

The cotton shipment was one of many destined for Lewiston, Maine, a small but growing mill town where entrepreneur Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ of Boston and his fellow investors had built their first textile mill two years earlier. In its first year, the mill had netted $33,000 in profit — putting Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on track to become a wealthy man in the years before the Civil War.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ readers know what comes next. Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and his business associates, eager to create civic institutions in Lewiston, made financial gifts to a new school founded in 1855 by Oren Cheney, a Freewill Baptist leader and fervent abolitionist. A decade later, Cheney named the school, by then a college, after ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, its principal benefactor.

Eager to build civic institutions in the growing town of Lewiston, textile mill owner Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and his associates — wealthy thanks to slave-grown cotton — made financial gifts to the school that would become ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

And from that foundation grew a college that today is rightly and widely known for its inclusive character.

That founding story is familiar, but it’s not the whole story, say ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and students who are now doing academic research to better understand what it means that a Northern college like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was intertwined at its founding with an American economy fueled by slave labor.

“Everyone says, ‘ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was founded by abolitionists,’â€� says Perla Figuereo ’21 of the Bronx, N.Y., who was part of a digital humanities course last fall that has begun a long-term, data-driven exploration of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ early financial history. “But no one adds, ‘and funded by slave cotton.’â€�

The founded-by-abolitionists narrative is “not necessarily false, but rather incomplete,â€� senior history major Ursula Rall of Kent, Ohio, told her audience during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day presentation with fellow senior Emma Soler of Bethesda, Md. “It’s important to acknowledge the other part of the founding.â€�

To be sure, up to the time of the Civil War, there’s hardly an American institution that ·É²¹²õ²Ô’t supported by the American slave economy.

In this 1860 photograph, African Americans, likely slaves, pick cotton near Montgomery, Ala. (Lakin, J.H., photographer. 186: https://www.loc.gov/item/2012648057)

“Slavery was integral to our nation’s founding, our economy in the North and South, our universities, and our wealth,â€� says journalist and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history major Kristen Doerer ’14, who has reported for the Chronicle of Higher Education on how colleges have reckoned with their historical connections to the U.S. slave economy.

“We can’t kid ourselves and think that because ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is in the North and was founded by abolitionists that it was immune from slavery,â€� she adds. “If we view wealth from cotton and slavery as dirty money, we should know that the dirt is everywhere — even under abolitionists’ fingernails.â€�

To that point, one day after Rall and Soler’s MLK Day presentation at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Maine Public Broadcasting devoted a segment of its Maine Calling program to examining the specifically how various Maine ship captains transported slaves from Africa to North America in the 1800s, even after it was made illegal.

That’s a barely known fact, says Kate McMahon, a scholar and Maine native who has done extensive research on Maine’s connection to the slave trade, because Maine has “valorized� its maritime tradition over the years while “making the suffering of other people invisible.�

“Slavery was integral to our nation’s founding, our economy in the North and South, our universities, and our wealth,â€� says journalist and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history major Kristen Doerer ’14, seen during a campus visit in 2019 when she offered a public talk and met with history students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

If we fail to fully appreciate this local history — such as, she says, the existence of “buildings in Portland that were built from funds from selling enslaved people� — then how do “we even begin to understand that we actually live with the legacies of slavery every single day here and now?�

On a larger journalistic scale, there’s also the ongoing New York Times’ 1619 Project, named for the year African slaves first arrived in Virginia. That project seeks to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.�

The digital humanities course that Perla Figuereo took last fall is taught by Anelise Hanson Shrout, an assistant professor of digital and computational studies. Like her students, Shrout feels the imperative to flesh out the college’s founding story.

“For me, as a historian and as a human who lives in Lewiston and works at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the story is more complicated than ‘ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has always stood for abolition,’” Shrout says. “We have the same foundational American sin baked into our history that much of the U.S. does.â€�

Perla Figuereo ’21 (center) presents a digital project developed with, to her left, classmate Alya Yousuf ’21 as part of their fall 2019 coursework in “Data Cultures,” taught by Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Anelise Hanson Shrout. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Last fall, Shrout’s students began painstaking work to review and pull numbers from the college’s early business ledgers, held by the college’s Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Those ledgers record the donations, large and small, that Cheney took in, including gifts from Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, who gave approximately $175,000 to the college, equivalent to a few million dollars today.

They also began a review of the many bundles of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mill cotton invoices now held by Lewiston Public Library. It is slow work, says Shrout, who anticipates devoting future editions of her course to the project. “We’ve only scratched the surface.â€�

Still, the individual cotton invoices are fascinating. Besides the amount and cost of the cotton shipments, they include dates, ship names, shipping routes, and wholesalers, painting a picture of how antebellum cotton made its way north.

Besides the aforementioned Kate Brigham, another ship that transported cotton to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mill was the Paul Boggs, which ran aground on Cape Cod’s infamous Chatham bar two years later. And still another, the Asa Fish, built in Mystic, Conn., in 1849, also transported African slaves to Cuba.

Shrout says the process of creating meaning from handwritten cotton invoices promises to teach a powerful liberal arts lesson. “One of the questions we’re asking is, ‘What does it mean to produce a dataset that represents labor that was violently stolen from people?’ How do we do that ethically and thoughtfully?�

Dated June 30, 1854, this invoice for 150 bales of cotton (63,795 pounds), for delivery to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Manufacturing Co. and its treasurer, Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, indicates that the cotton was shipped from New Orleans on the schooner Kate Brigham. (Photograph by Anelise Hanson Shrout)

In today’s world, “data is thrown around as if it is objective,� Shrout continues. “We feed tremendous amounts of data into algorithms that decide what a self-driving car sees as human or how people are policed. But data is always an artifact of some kind of human decision, so at a meta level in this class, I want students to take that away.�

The basic facts of the college’s founding, both Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ cotton connection and Oren Cheney’s abolitionist views, have been well-documented over the years, even as the latter narrative has, until now, received more attention.

In the 1970s, Jim Leamon ’55, then a young history professor and now an emeritus member of the faculty, enlisted students to help him research Lewiston’s economic history, including Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ contributions to the city’s early growth.

Commissioned by the city’s Historic Commission, Leamon’s monograph explained as other New England mills suffered: because Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ gambled on a long war and “bought up huge stocks of cotton at 12 cents a pound when the struggle began,â€� writes Leamon. “By 1864 cotton was worth 70 cents, and a year later it was over a dollar a pound.â€�

The Asa Fish was among the many ships that delivered slave-grown cotton to Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ mills in Lewiston before the Civil War. Flying under the American flag, the bark also transported slaves from the west coast of Africa to Cuba.

Thanks to the stockpiled cotton and government war contracts, Lewiston mill profits were “remarkable� during the war, Leamon concludes. In sharp contrast, other New England mills sold their stockpiled cotton early in the war for a quick profit, then had to pay exorbitant prices as the supply of Southern cotton dried up. In Lowell, Mass., for example, the era is dubbed “Lowell’s blunder.�

It is important to note, too, that Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was among a group of businessmen who lent their support to the new school, including Francis Skinner, a Boston-based middleman who sold Southern cotton to Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ mills and who became a college trustee.

“We hate it — we abhor it, we loathe it — we detest and despise it as a giant sin against God, and an awful crime upon man.�

Oren Cheney’s devotion both to abolitionism and to creating a radically inclusive college have also been well-documented over the years, including by Tim Larson ’05 in his landmark senior honors thesis in history, “Faith By Their Works.�

Noting that Cheney had operated a branch of the Underground Railroad in Maine prior to founding a new college, Larson quotes Cheney’s own words on the topic of slavery: “We hate it — we abhor it, we loathe it — we detest and despise it as a giant sin against God, and an awful crime upon man.�

Larson also notes that, in founding an inclusive college, Cheney was combatting powerful social norms that “advocated for discrimination against women, African Americans, and the poor.� Despite those and other pressures, the college “held its ground� and maintained its inclusive practices.

(In fact, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College ·É²¹²õ²Ô’t Cheney’s only handiwork. Well-connected politically thanks to his service in the Maine Legislature, Cheney used his influence to help found another mission-driven school, Storer College, in Harpers Ferry, W. Va., in 1865, which was dedicated to educating freed slaves.)

Still, Larson noted, there was the vexing question, a “contradictionâ€� as he called it, of why an “ardent abolitionistâ€� like Cheney would take money from industrialists like Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, who might be “as much to blame as Southern slave ownersâ€� for “allowing slavery to thrive.â€� Larson answers the question this way: “Perhaps this contradiction speaks more to the omnipresence of the slave system in American economy than to Cheney’s own shortcomings.â€�

Founder of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Oren Cheney, seen in 1873, was a bona fide abolitionist. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Fifteen years later, appreciating the urgency with which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and faculty have taken up “the contradictionâ€� requires some historical context.

In 2003, Brown University started to investigate its direct historical connection to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. A few years later, scholars and students at Harvard began a similar exploration. And in 2013, historian Craig Steven Wilder published Ebony and Ivy, which broadly explained how all of U.S. higher education in the 18th and 19th centuries, not just a few schools, capitalized in some way on America’s slave economy.

With Wilder’s book, explains Joseph Hall, an associate professor of history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, “U.S. colleges no longer had to chooseâ€� whether to admit to benefiting from slavery. “Wilder demonstrated that everyone was involved, whether you liked it or not.â€�

In addition, a new generation of scholars, including Wilder, from groups previously underrepresented in academe, including women and African Americans, are now asking new questions about American history, often through the lenses of colonialism (the subjugation of one people by and for the benefit of other people), white supremacy, and racism.

“People are asking different kinds of questions,� says Hall. “And different people are involved in asking those questions.�

In the early 2000s at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, questions about the college’s historical connection to the American slave economy were cropping up in and around ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ classrooms, prompted by faculty in the history department and the Africana program, including professors Sue Houchins and now-retired Margaret Creighton. (Discussions in her classroom, in part, led to Larson’s ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-focused thesis.)

In recent years, faculty and students began to move the topic front and center in their academic work, spurred in part by national events, including publication of Ebony and Ivy, racial violence in Ferguson, and the subsequent emergence of Black Lives Matter. At the same time, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was using its convening power to showcase a string of prominent speakers on race and equity in America, including Wilder himself, who spoke at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in January 2017.

An audience fills a Dana Chemistry Hall classroom on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to hear Emma Soler ’20 and Ursula Rall ’20 lead a discussion about the college’s dual founding narratives: founded by abolitionists and funded initially by Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, a textile manufacturer who derived wealth from slave-grown cotton. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

That September, members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty raised the issue during a discussion in a packed Pettengill Hall classroom, held to help students understand issues of white supremacy and Confederate monuments in the wake of in Charlottesville, Va.

Noting how Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ profited from slave-grown cotton, Assistant Professor of History Andrew Baker pointed out that while it’s meaningful to remove Confederate monuments in the South, we need to look at history closer to home. Racial problems don’t somehow “belong to a different time,â€� Baker said. “It’s always been a part of America itself, and so that touches all of us.â€�

From the classroom to the public lectern, Joe Hall has lent his academic voice to the topic in recent years. He recalls how, more than a decade ago and after Larson did his thesis, he began to mention the college’s connection to slave-grown cotton as a “throwaway line� in one of his classes, such as “African Slavery in the Americas.� He says, “I remember a student telling me, ‘I never thought about that before.’ It’s been kind of an itch� ever since.

From the classroom and the lectern, Associate Professor of History Joe Hall in recent years has invited the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community to consider the meaning of its founding connection to the American slave economy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

In spring 2018, Hall introduced the topic in a “master classâ€� that he led during a campus Admitted Students Reception, when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ rolls out the garnet carpet for new admits. After briefing the students on the basic facts, he asked, “What’s missing from the story about Oren Cheney and Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½?â€� One of the students replied, “There’s no African American history here.â€�

Hall says, “That was great, because he was absolutely right.�

And that September, Hall, speaking to the incoming Class of 2022 during Opening Convocation, used his address, “Questions for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� to explore at some length the apparent contradictions of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founding.

For the past two semesters, Hall has devoted one of the department’s signature courses, “Historical Methods,â€� an upper-level seminar that prepares majors for thesis work, to the question of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founding. During the course, he has guided students into the college’s Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library and downtown to Lewiston Public Library.

In February 2019, students in Associate Professor of History Joe Hall’s historical methods class pore over historical documents related to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ founding in Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. From left, Eric Opoku, Benni McComish, Zach Jonas, Andrew Faciano, and Ke’ala Brosseau. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

From Hall’s perspective as a teacher and scholar, probing questions about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founding are what a liberal arts education is all about: appreciating complexity, knowing that there’s more than meets the eye, and being on the lookout for unintended consequences.

“The good in the world, even the good found in a place like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, does not come without a cost,â€� he says. “In the case of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founding, it was a tremendous cost in human lives.â€� And it’s powerful, he adds, that his students are learning these lessons in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ framework. “There’s immediacy. They can see the relevance of it because they care about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€�

Ke’ala Brosseau ’20 of South Burlington, Vt., was in Hall’s methods course last year. With several classmates, she made a presentation at the annual Mount David Summit that looked at how ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, as an institution, has foregrounded its abolitionist founding narrative over the years.

When an institution emphasizes one narrative, it’s like putting on blinders. “You don’t recognize the imbalances of power,â€� she says, that have muted other voices over time, including, in the case of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founding, humans imprisoned by slavery. Furthermore, she adds, “It’s hard to recognize inequality today when we don’t confront things that have happened in our past.â€�

“It’s hard to recognize inequality today when we don’t confront things that have happened in our past,” says history major Ke’ala Brosseau ’20 of South Burlington, Vt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

To be sure, it will take time and effort to discover, let alone amplify, the voices of people who grew the cotton that created the wealth leading to the college’s founding.

For her senior honors thesis, Emma Soler initially hoped to “put a human faceâ€� on the cotton trade by tracing cotton that Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ used in Lewiston back to specific Southern plantations, and perhaps to specific individuals.

In the limited time of a senior thesis project, that goal proved unattainable. Indeed, Hall imagines that the search for cotton clues might someday extend to century-old dissertations on the cotton trade housed in Southern universities. “It will take some bibliographic digging,� he says.

So Soler has pivoted to a broader analysis, looking at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ founding in the context of the U.S. slave economy as well as campus discourse around the issue, contemporary campus culture, and reparations movements.

Emma Soler ’20 is using her honors history thesis to explore how college’s founding narratives affect the college today. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

She’s asking questions such as, “How do we talk about this history on campus? What is the consensus about talking about this history in a different way? Do people think it’s impacting their experience here?â€� And, if so, “positively or negatively?â€�

From her perspective as an interested alumna, Kristen Doerer sees value in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and students continuing their exploration of the college’s founding connection to the American slave economy.

“It says that this institution isn’t afraid to take on hard topics and study, examine, and discuss them.�

On April 5, 1855, Oren Cheney presided over the very first meeting of the board of trustees of his new school, the Maine State Seminary, which would become ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College by 1864.

At the time, the school was a paper tiger, and just barely. Its hard-won charter had been granted by the Maine Legislature just three weeks prior, on March 16. Much more than symbolic, the April 5 gathering marked the actual establishment of the corporation — the establishment of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, in a real sense.

Then as now, April is mud season in Maine, and travel to Augusta was likely difficult for those founding trustees. For that or other reasons, by the meeting’s scheduled start time of 10 a.m., only 14 of Cheney’s 28 trustees— one shy of the required majority— had arrived for the meeting.

The location of the meeting, in Augusta, at a new Freewill Baptist church on State Street for which Cheney served as pastor, typified the resolve that Cheney would bring to bear in founding ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Three years earlier, the little church was in disarray and had already disbanded once. Yet Cheney agreed to be its pastor. “The call here had little money in it,” recalled Cheney, “hardly enough to keep soul and body together, and the hardest of work.”

Appointed in June 1852, Cheney immediately raised money for a new building, which was funded, built, and dedicated, debt-free, just 17 months later at a cost of $5,600.

This tree-filled yard (center) on State Street in Augusta is the likely location of the Freewill Baptist Church and the first meeting of the trustees of the Maine State Seminary on April 5, 1855. (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Minus one trustee needed for a majority, Cheney didn’t just sit and stew. He sent a text, 1800s style, firing off a telegram to one wayward trustee, Joshua Haskell, in Topsham, about 30 miles south. “We lack one trustee to make a majority — come in the next train,â€� Cheney pleaded.

Luckily, a 15th trustee (not Haskell) soon breezed through the door of the Freewill Baptist church, and the meeting got underway. Lasting until 11 p.m., it was “harmonious and pleasant without exception,� Cheney said, noting that the trustees adjourned the meeting knowing that an existential decision, choosing the school’s location, awaited them at their next meeting in June.

Oren Cheney famously kept his eyes on the prize: to found a new Maine college. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

When you’re trying to launch a new college, as Oren Cheney was doing on this day in 1855, you sweat the details. A former member of the Maine Legislature, Cheney had famously kept watch over the bill for the seminary charter as it made its way through the Legislature, hand-delivering the bill to the governor’s office for signing the month before.

You also don’t suffer fools, and you watch your money.

So naturally, Cheney didn’t forget about the cable he’d sent to Brunswick (the closest telegraph office to Topsham), nor the 20 cents he’d spent on it.

Turns out, the telegraph office had dumped Cheney’s urgent message into the outgoing mail rather than deliver it immediately to Haskell. “There it remained for hours until the cars [trains] had passed,� Cheney wrote in his regular column in The Morning Star, a Baptist newspaper.

Indeed, Cheney devoted a good portion of his April 18 column to calling out the Brunswick telegraph office. “We mention this to put the public on guard,� he wrote. “We can send a letter to Brunswick for 3 cents — the dispatch cost 20 — and both of them, in the case presented, would be money thrown away.�

As for the Freewill meetinghouse at 43 State St., it is long gone. The church merged with another Baptist church in Augusta in the 1920s to form the Penney Memorial United Baptist Church.

What remains on the site today is a wooded lot between two historic buildings that also date to the mid-1800s. After the church merger, the building was later home to a building contractor (whose structures, among others, included “car barns,” for trolley cars) and, by the 1920s, an Oldsmobile dealership.

It was razed some time after 1936, as it is mentioned as still standing in the college history ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College and Its Background.

Sources for this story included the , Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, the  in Augusta, and the in Augusta.

Text of the 2018 Convocation address, “Questions for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� by Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall, delivered on Sept. 4:

Good morning. Happy New Year.

I want to begin with a few words of thanks, first of all to Walter for such wonderful remarks. You have a gifted classmate.

I want to also thank the Wabanaki peoples and the homelands that we sit and stand on, and the people whose labor has made our conversation today possible, including the sign language interpreters who are turning the words that you hear into words that you can see.

I’d like to thank the Class of 2018 for nominating me for this opportunity to speak with you all. I’m sorry they’re not here for me to extend my thanks in person, but it is truly an honor, and I am grateful to them for it.

I’d like to thank two students in particular, Tim Larson from the Class of 2005, and Emma Soler, who’s from the Class of 2020, both of whom have done important research that makes a lot of what I’m going to be talking about today possible.

To Caitlin Lampman, Michelle Belden, and Pat Webber, who all work in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Muskie Archives and Special Collections, for providing access to the history that I’m going to be talking about. And last of all, of course, to you all for being here. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you who are new, whether you’re in the Class of 2022 or new faculty or new staff. I hope your time here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is much more than you expect.

Although I am certainly grateful for the chance to be here to speak with you all, I have to admit that I’m a little bit frustrated by the conventions that bring us here.

We all decided to come to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ because it’s an institution that prides itself on small scale conversation, whether in our classrooms, dormitories, or departments and programs. Yet you as the Class of 2022 are going to begin and end your academic careers here dutifully listening to people garbed in velvet robes, standing behind large wooden lecterns, and not really having much of a conversation.

It’s not that I’m really opposed to velvet and wood. It’s not even necessarily that I’m opposed to lectures with large audiences. The problem is that what really excites me about being here with you all is the chance to actually to get to know you and to talk with you. The reason those conversations are particularly interesting is because within that intimacy, we have the opportunity to learn from each other but also, as in our mission statement, “to engage the transformative power of our differences.â€�

This kind of lecture, frankly, is not the kind of format where I’m expecting that we’re getting much in terms of intimacy or engagement. Let me just say right at the beginning, I don’t really care what you think about what I’m about to say. I am very interested in hearing what you want to do with what I have to say. What I want to do is think about questions, which are at the heart of any good conversation.

I’d like to think about what a question is — at its heart, it’s about a quest; that’s at the root of the word. The Latin quaerere, or quest, is at the heart of a number of words that we think about with questions, such as “queryâ€� or “inquiry.â€� The Latin quaerare means to seek or to inform oneself, to ask, but I want to think about “questionâ€� in terms of that idea of quest. When the Middle English used that word, they were invoking a certain kind of judicial understanding. You see that in the way we use the word “inquest,â€� or even “Inquisition.â€�

I’ll bet no one was expecting that. In asking questions, it’s incredibly important that we remember that a quest for knowledge should not simply be a quest to prove yourself right, a quest to conduct an inquisition that seeks to stamp out ideas that differ from your own. To be inquisitive, not inquisitorial, is what I’m talking about here.

I also want to make clear that I think every question has the potential to lead to something big, to have something big at stake. I’m a firm believer, as I think are almost all of my colleagues, that there is no such thing as a stupid question. I’m sure many of you have heard that injunction many times. Many of you might, in fact, not believe it, because you think you’ve heard stupid questions and maybe even asked a stupid question. But let me ask you to think about it this way: If a question is an adventure or a journey, if it’s a quest, and if every journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step, then the converse means that every step has the potential to begin a journey of 1,000 miles — which is to say, every question has the potential to hold some much bigger questions at stake.

Let me put this in terms of a question that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m going to need you to use your hands here.

How many of you have heard that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College was founded by Oren Cheney, who was an abolitionist?

All right, so many of you have. If you haven’t, that’s totally fine, but now you have. Oren Cheney was an important founder of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. He was a Free Will Baptist. He believed deeply in the equality of all people, such that he believed that anyone should be admitted to what was, in 1855, the Maine State Seminary, regardless of their racial or gender backgrounds.

A second question. How many of you know that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College is named after Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, an industrialist who established the textile mills in downtown Lewiston?

All right, you guys are warming up. This is good. It’s in 1864 that Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is going to give the first $10,000 of what would eventually be a $200,000 set of gifts to Oren Cheney, so that the Maine State Seminary could become a liberal arts college named after Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Third question. How many of you know that the cotton textiles that Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and others are weaving in Lewiston are going to be made, until 1865, from cotton that is grown by enslaved people in the south of the United States?

Okay, so maybe not as many. That is, in a sense, an indication of some of the ways we talk about our history in this country.

These three questions are at the heart of what I think is perhaps, by now, an obvious question: If Oren Cheney was an abolitionist, deeply opposed to slavery, and Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was making his money weaving cotton grown by enslaved people, why was Oren Cheney taking ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ money?

And what does that mean for us?

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ founder Oren Cheney

We can start with Cheney’s own diary, which, fortunately, you can find in the Muskie Archives. It’s really a wonderful little artifact. It’s about three inches by five inches, a small leather-bound thing that he could stick in his pocket. When you open it, on each page would be the seven days of the week — Monday through Wednesday on one side, then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on the other page.

There’s only one year of this diary that still exists, which for me, is a fascinating question. For a man who keeps a diary so often — and we know that he did keep other diaries — why is there only one still remaining? The fact is, because it’s 1864, we have a chance to find out a little bit of what he thought when he first talked with Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ about that first $10,000 gift that would make the seminary into a college. I want to read to you from that important day when Cheney and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ first talked about that gift, March 4, 1864.

“Have had a long and pleasant call on Mr. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€”says he will give $10,000—would rather have had another name—he cannot act as our agent as well as if on another name—but said it might be as well for us in the end—said should at some future time make us a donation. I asked, ‘Before your death?;’ He replied: ‘Perhaps so, I cannot say.’ Said now is the time to start subscription in Boston. Went to Concord, N. H. Stop with Bro. E. P. Prescott. Carrie and I called at the Millett’s.â€�

Hearing these words might seem rather unremarkable, but it’s extraordinary when you look at the diary, because here’s this incredibly small page, and Oren Cheney’s trying to fit all of these words on one third of it. You can see, as he’s writing, the penmanship gets tighter and tighter and smaller and smaller until he’s finally wrapping the words up around the page because he doesn’t have room to fit all the important things that Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is telling him on March 4th, 1864. Cheney, in what looks like fairly spare prose, is really, really excited. $10,000: He was going around very happy when people would give $100 or $10, and here’s a man giving $10,000 and offering the prospect of much more.

But he doesn’t say anything about slavery.

We know that Cheney had opinions about slavery. He was a member of the Free Will Baptists, which was one of the denominations so radical as to believe that God offered salvation to all people. If that was true, then slavery was, as Cheney put it in an opening editorial to the abolitionist newspaper Morning Star, “a giant sin against God and an awful crime against man.� Cheney was so deeply committed to abolitionism that he left Brown University because, as a student, he did not see it as abolitionist enough. Cheney believe deeply in abolitionism.

It’s worth noting that abolitionism was something of a fringe at the time — it’s easy to say we’re all abolitionists now, but roughly 2 percent of Americans living in the north of the United States were abolitionists in the 1850s. Just so you understand, the Libertarian Party polled 4 percent in the national election in 2016.

When it comes to talking about money made, at least indirectly but still fundamentally from slavery, there is silence.

There was controversy surrounding ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ establishment of this gift to make a college. The controversy lay not with slavery and money, at least as far as Cheney would remember it. The controversy lay in the fact that Cheney was accepting money to make a college in the first place. When Cheney established the Maine State Seminary in 1855, there were a number of Free Will Baptist seminaries in other parts of northern New England. All of them were thinking about becoming a college at some point, in a sense stepping up from being a post high school kind of school to being one that dealt more deeply in the liberal arts. Cheney actually assured a number of people, “Don’t worry, I’m actually looking into just establishing a seminary.â€� Yet here he is nine years later, looking for the money to make a college. A lot of people were incredibly unhappy with this. They were so unhappy that decades later, in 1907, when Emmeline Cheney, Oren’s wife, wrote a biography of her now-dead husband, she took an entire chapter to explain why it was that he had done what he did and to defend those decisions.

Cheney and his colleagues were also aware of the limits on the kind of money they could accept. Cheney’s successor and second president of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, George Chase, recalled in the 1880s that Free Will Baptists, when they were thinking about establishing ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, would have been reluctant to send their children to a college, “maintained by the fruits of slave labor.â€� What he was referring to specifically was that there had been a southerner, a plantation owner, who had offered money to an institution in New Hampshire. He had not actually followed through on that, but Chase was acknowledging that plantation owners, perhaps strangely, were interested in supporting an abolitionist institution, and that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College would have probably been very uncomfortable with that fact, had that plantation owner been interested in giving a donation here.

Here we have a college that is aware of some controversial elements of a decision to become a college, and is aware that slavery is actually a controversial piece of a foundation of a college — and yet when it comes to talking about money made at least indirectly but still fundamentally from slavery, there is silence.

I find that silence intriguing because it suggests just how deeply this nation — not just south but north, south, and west — depended on the enslavement of millions. Abolitionists, including mill owners, failed to disassociate themselves from ties to slavery. Emma Soler has done some wonderful research on this fact, to show that even a mill owner in Rhode Island would be anxious about how he was going to continue being an abolitionist, while he continued to weave cotton grown by the people he wanted to be free.

This failure to acknowledge or at least directly address these compromises raises for me another set of intriguing questions, and I want to take another moment to think about it etymology. “Intrigueâ€� is a wonderful word. It comes from the Latin intricare, to entangle or to confuse. It’s worth thinking about intriguing questions, because it is those kinds of questions that are questions in which you find yourself entangled. To put it differently: In what ways are you inextricably tied to the questions that you pose?

It’s with that idea of intrigue that I point out that I did not title this talk “questions for Cheneyâ€� or “Questions for Cheney and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� but instead, “Questions for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€� My real interest is not questions for them, although I would love to sit down in a room with both of them, but it’s for us.

When it comes to slavery, abolitionism, and racism, there are many contemporary entanglements for us to consider. As Bryan Stevenson, the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, pointed out in his Commencement address last May, “I don’t think we’re free in America. I think we’re burdened by our history of racial inequality. It’s in the air in Maine, just like it’s in the air in Mississippi. It doesn’t matter where you go, there is this contaminant that we’re all breathing in.â€�

You can see some of that contamination in the life of someone like Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of the Common Read for this year, who, in many instances, recounts how she was silenced by the racism of others. That silence is not something that she bore alone or something that she suffered alone, even though I think she suffered it more than the other people around her. Everyone who was with her suffered it for not being able to benefit from the wisdom that she could offer, the trust that she could build, with those who instead were inflicting great pain on her.

It’s in the face of these problems that people like Lythcott-Haims and Stevenson point out that I wonder, can talking more fully about Oren Cheney, his vision and his compromises, and also his silences, help us see a little better this contaminated air and perhaps even hear a little better our awkward silences?

There’s a problem with this, and that’s that my question, at least for what I want to do right now is just too big. The amplification is too loud. You’re all sitting here very quietly, nicely regimented in your rows, and I’m stuck behind this big wall of wood. I would so much rather talk with you all in a smaller group, as I was able to do in April, when I talked about this with a group of prospective students.

I would like some of you to ask me, as some of them did, “What role did African Americans play an abolitionism?� “Why are you talking just about white men?� And for that matter, “What role do you play? What role does your background play, as a white man, in asking these questions and seeking these answers?�

Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall urged the Class of 2022 to ask the questions that intrigue them. â€�Your quest, your development, depends on your questions.â€� (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Of course, there’s another big problem here, and that’s that these are only my questions. Your quest, your development, depends on your questions. I hope you get some of those questions and answers from the people around you.

Consider, for instance, asking Frankie Urueta, a custodian in the basement of Pettengill — when he gives you a fist bump, you’ll know who he is — why he wants ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to host a powwow. Ask Michael Sergeant what he thinks about ranked-choice voting, or go and then ask him. Ask research librarian Christine Murray anything. If you have time, ask her about how birds communicate. Let’s talk about what intrigues us, and remember, there really are no stupid questions.

Perhaps just as important, let’s find the space to do this. it’s so easy to say to stand here and say, “be curious, ask questionsâ€� when that does not help you get your homework finished. The dreams of September frequently wither under the obligations of October. If you are going to ask questions, ideally you’re going to have the space to do so in your classrooms. But there might be other questions that intrigue you that don’t fit in those spaces. I hope you do the work to make those spaces.

For my part, if you have a question for me, I’ll cut corners on my committee work right there. I might even cut some corners on my lecture for class tomorrow. For those of you who are in either of my classes tomorrow, you might see some of the effects of these questions in your syllabi. That’s not quite as much of a joke as I’d like it to be right now.

What it’s really about is you and the questions you want to ask. I hope I’m part of them. I hope others here are part of them. We have this wonderful opportunity in this wonderful environment to ask them.

I’d like to close with one last question: Does anyone have time to talk over lunch next week?

Thank you.

In November 1874, Frederick Douglass, traveling the country giving a series of lectures, stopped at Lewiston City Hall, where he spoke about abolitionist martyr John Brown.

Douglass, the great author, orator, and abolitionist, had come at the invitation of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ senior class, but the likely real reason was more personal: his friendship with fellow abolitionist leader and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ founder Oren Cheney and his family.

Frederick Douglass, photographed by George Schreiber in April 1870. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

In 1840, for example, when Douglass visited New Hampshire to speak at a meeting of the New England Antislavery Society, he stayed with Cheney’s father and mother, Moses and Abigail, at the Cheney home in Peterborough, which was a station on the Underground Railroad.

As an adult, Oren Cheney created his own Underground Railroad stop, helping fugitives reach Canada. He hosted Douglass in his home several times, along with such other anti-slavery advocates as Austen Willey, Henry Wilson, Sojourner Truth, and Frances Watkins.

“By allowing abolitionists and particularly black abolitionists to stay at his home in Maine,â€� wrote Tim Larson ’05, in a senior honors thesis published during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ 150th anniversary celebration, “Cheney was clearly making a stance about racial boundaries.â€�

Cheney and Douglass were both giants in their worlds. Cheney was a vocal abolitionist, couching his position in his Free Will Baptist faith. He became a Maine state legislator who made unabashed speeches advocating for both abolition and prohibition.

Frederick Douglass (left) pays respects to U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner, whose body lies in state in the U.S. Capitol in March 1874. A prominent abolitionist, Sumner, who was close friends with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ founder Oren Cheney, gave ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ its enduring motto, “Amore ac Studio” — “with ardor and devotion.” (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

He circulated his anti-slavery position as owner of the Morning Star newspaper, though, he asserted, “we can find no language that has the power to express the hatred we have towards so vile and so wicked an institution.�

Douglass, of course, wrote best-selling autobiographies, published the North Star, and was involved in the , which before and after the Civil War advocated for social and political equality for African Americans. He traveled widely, giving orations against slavery and racism.

As the group tried to enter, the proprietor “rudely repulsed� Douglass.

Douglass also went into politics and in 1852 was named a delegate to the presidential nominating convention of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery. On the way to the convention in Pittsburgh, Douglass — and Cheney, the sole delegate from Maine — joined a group of delegates for a dinner stop in Alliance, Ohio.

Dinner was ready for the delegates at a hotel in Alliance, but as the group tried to enter, the proprietor “rudely repulsed,� Douglass wrote in an autobiography.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ participated in a “transcribe-a-thonâ€� on Frederick Douglass’ 200th birthday, Feb. 14, helping to create searchable digital versions of African American historical documents. Here, Wesley Chaney and Patrick Otim, assistant professors of history, watch a Facebook Live presentation on Douglass, the Colored Conventions, and the Freedman’s Bureau. Between them is Otim’s cardboard cutout of Douglass. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Cheney’s wife, Emeline, and Douglass, both writing about the incident some decades later, each ended the story differently. Emeline Cheney, writing about her husband’s political activity, said the proprietor “backed right down� when the delegates refused to eat without Douglass.

Douglass, including the incident as one of many in which he was refused food, travel, or lodging because of his race, wrote that the delegates refused to eat. Further, when the group came back through Alliance after the convention, it again refused to go into the hotel, and a dinner for 300 “was left to spoil.�

Such instances of racism did not end after the Civil War, and Douglass continued to speak and write against discrimination and for social and political equality.

Cheney and Douglass’s affinity lasted a lifetime. “Cheney clearly felt that there was a divine unity among all people regardless of race,â€� writes Larson. When Douglass died in 1895, Cheney attended the funeral. Both men, according to Emeline Cheney, asserted that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.â€�

This year, on Feb. 14, Douglass’ 200th birthday, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ participated in a “,â€� helping to create searchable digital versions of African American historical documents in order to make historical and genealogical research easier.

The first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement was in 1867, which makes the 2016 edition the 150th in college history. Or have there been more?

In the spirit of trying to make things count, here are 15-plus facts and stories from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencements.

The first Commencement was on July 31, 1867

A detail of the cover of first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement program, in 1867. The words “Tenth Anniversary” at upper right allude to the September 1857 opening of the Maine State Seminary, which became ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Eight students received bachelor’s degrees at the first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement, which was held at a Baptist church on Main Street in Lewiston.

Frank Sleeper, a senior from Lewiston, was the first speaker, delivering the Latin Salutatory, a graduation tradition of the day that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ adopted for its ceremony.

The program titles his address Disquisitio Salutatoria, which “we could translate very loosely as ‘Opening Remarks,'” rather than ‘Address of Greeting,'” says Tom Hayward, lecturer emeritus in classical and medieval studies.

“You have labored to found a college which shall be an ornament to our state.”

Delivering his salutatory in the required Latin, Sleeper praised ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ president and founder Oren Cheney.

“Joyful indeed to you must be the day which brings to you the fruits of years of patient toil and sacrifice,” Sleeper said. “The faithfulness with which you have labored to found a college which shall be an ornament to our state is known to all, and as long as this institution shall exist so long will your name be remembered with blessings and honor.”

A featured Commencement speaker is a post-World War II phenomenon

Before World War II, the featured speakers at Commencement were students. The 1936 slate features talks on “The Juvenile Court,” “The Novelist Sits in Judgment,” “Creative Thought,” and “Stability in China.”

During the war, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was on an accelerated academic calendar so would confer some degrees at special convocations in fall and winter. Featured guests spoke at those gatherings, including Joseph Drew, the diplomat who had been interned by the Japanese at the start of the war, in January 1943.

The custom of having a featured speaker then took hold and has been a staple of Commencements in 1944.

The first African American speaker at Commencement was Coretta Scott King

In her 1971 address, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated three years before, delivered a blistering attack on violence, racism, and more in America.

She took on one of the most controversial issues of that year, the arrest and pending trial of activist Angela Davis on weapons charges.

Coretta Scott King marches in the 1971 academic procession at Commencement. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“While I sharply disagree with the politics of Miss Davis, I must say that if her blackness, her politics, and her womanhood are being judged, and not the crime, then all Americans will lose some of their liberties along with her.”

She also paid tribute to Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920.

“From the earliest days of the Struggle, until my husband’s last rites on the campus of Martin’s beloved Morehouse, Dr. Mays was at our side. The friendship, which he and my husband formed when Martin was a Morehouse student, grew, deepened, and ripened with the years….

“So I am happy this morning to be present at the alma mater of my friend and colleague. My happiness is doubled when I realize that in 1917, a period rife with the inherent inferiority of the black man and the inherent superiority of the white man, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College accepted a young black man from South Carolina and allowed that young man to emancipate himself and accept with dignity his own worth as a free man.

“I make bold to state that Dr. Mays is without a contemporary peer in the inspiration and motivation that he has given to thousands of young blacks, men in particular, in their quest for emancipation from the myths of racism.�

The first female graduate was Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, in 1869

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduated its first woman, Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, at its third Commencement, in 1869. She was a determined student. Offered a scholarship, Mitchell turned it down: “I can take care of myself.â€�

While six women started as members of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ first college class, none graduated until Mitchell, a fact that reflects how difficult it was for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ founder Oren Cheney to turn radical theory into sustainable practice, as Tim Larson ’05 wrote in his honors thesis, “Faith by Their Works.”

Larson notes that Cheney “obviously saw ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as a pioneer in breaking gender barriers in the field of higher education.”

Cheney also “accurately foresaw the future of American higher education in predicting that ‘all the colleges of our country will welcome women.’ This was a bold assertion to make when Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams, Tufts, and all the other New England colleges were still closed to women.”

Nevertheless, Larson writes, the first female students “obviously faced prejudices, from their male counterparts and society in general,” that may have contributed to their leaving the college before graduation.

In the end, “despite hostility and some well-meaning paternalism by certain individuals, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was among the more progressive institutions in admitting women alongside men, when many other colleges refused to do so for another century.”

Years later, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ granted degrees to two of the women, Francena Stanton Morrell and Sybil Chase Ballard: Morrell in 1931 and Ballard in 1932. Here’s a clip of Ballard, age 87, at Commencement 1934:

The first African American graduate was Henry Wilkins Chandler, in 1874

Henry Chandler, Class of 1874, was the college’s first African American graduate. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“The abolitionist ideals of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ founder, Oren Cheney…were largely acted out as he recruited the earliest African American students for the school,” writes Larson in his honors thesis noted above.

Cheney’s recruitment included Henry Chandler, the first African American graduate of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, in 1874.

While six of the first nine African American students to attend ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ were former slaves, most recruited by founder Oren Cheney during and after the Civil War, Chandler was born free.

Ten years before Chandler’s graduation, Cheney had written in his diary about stopping in Bath, Maine, to see an African American acquaintance. Cheney recorded that the man’s “son and daughter will ‘go through’ the college.” That son was most likely Chandler.

After graduating from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1874, he studied law at Howard University, then practiced law in Florida; he also edited The Ocala Republican and The Plain Dealer newspapers.

In 1880, Chandler was elected to the Florida state senate and held office for two terms. He was also a state delegate to the Republican National Conventions.

Commencement and Reunion used to take place on the same weekend

The tradition of welcoming alumni back for Commencement had been formalized by the late 1890s, and by the 1930s, these class gatherings were their own thing.

And a big thing, as alumni built out the event known today as Reunion with dinners, class outings, presentations, and, of course, the popular Alumni Parade.

Long held during the same weekend, Commencement and Reunion were split around 1980.

Here’s the Class of 1914’s “Round Up” at the 1934 Alumni Parade at Commencement.

The U.S. Navy was part of the awarding of degrees during World War II

During World War II, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was on a 12-month schedule, and undergraduates could choose an accelerated program, so diplomas were awarded a few times a year (three times in 1943).

Also during the war, the Navy had 120,000 student sailors stationed at 131 U.S. colleges, including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, for officer training and accelerated college instruction.

In this clip, the sailors of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ V-12 program lead the way to the Oct. 24, 1943, convocation, where 13 students received bachelor’s degrees.

A Senior Speaker returned to Commencement in 2013

While student speakers were long the norm at Baccalaureate, the day before Commencement, students had not had a featured speaking role at graduation since the mid-1900s.

That changed in 2013 when Tommy Holmberg ’13 became the first Senior Speaker in the modern era.

The Commencement Concert was the “big event of the season” in the 1870s

Opera singer Madame Nordica, seen here in an undated photo, sang at the 1877 Commencement Concert. (George Grantham Bain Collection / Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

In its early years, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “concentrated its musical efforts on the commencement concerts,” said the Lewiston Evening Journal in 1939, and the concerts became “the big musical and social event of the season for the Twin Cities.”

Some of the concerts were held at the new Music Hall on upper Lisbon Street, “the best opera house east of Boston,” according to one account. It’s now home to the district court.

By the mid 1870s, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement Concert could cost upwards of $1,200, the equivalent of about $21,000 today.

The 1877 concert brought “two of the most famous singers that New England has ever given the world,” according to the Journal.

One was opera singer Annie Louise Cary, a native of Wayne, Maine.

George Loring White, an 1876 graduate, recalled that “when Miss Cary sang ‘Coming thru the rye,’ smiles became distinctly audible all over the house. I felt like coming thru the rye myself.”

The second singer at that 1877 concert was the even more famous Lillian Norton, a native of Farmington, Maine, who would gain worldwide recognition as “Madame Nordica.”

The Commencement Dinner was once catered by a well-known local name

In the early 1900s, the Commencement “Dinner” was not in the evening but right after graduation, at noon. This is the older use of the word, in the sense of the main meal of the day.

The 1916 Commencement Dinner was catered by a name familiar to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and alumni.

Note that the 1916 menu was catered by “Alton L. Grant.” His business became Grant & Grant Caterers, which became Grant’s Bakery on Sabattus Street, the go-to spot for parents sending sweets to their students.

Here’s a peek at this year’s spread, now known as the Commencement Luncheon:

• Summer slaw salad with lemon vinaigrette
• Cavatappi salad with sundried tomato basil and fresh spinach
• Edamame hummus with tortilla chips
• Lobster salad rolls
• Chicken salad rolls
• Olive oil and garlic roasted vegetable medley with portobello mushrooms, summer squash, and zucchini
• Sliced watermelon
• Cookies and brownies
• Italian ice
• Assorted beverages, including Summit Springs Water

The 2016 edition is actually the college’s 153rd Commencement

Strange, but true. In the mid-1960s, President Charles Phillips implemented an aggressive three-year graduation option. To make it work, he created a third academic term, which became Short Term.

By spring 1968, the first cohort of three-year grads was ready to graduate. On April 22, the college held a Commencement for its traditional four-year cohort. Then the three-year group graduated on June 28, after they had finished their final Short Term.

The same was true in 1969 (April 28 and July 4) and 1970 (April 20 and June 12).

The academic procession in April 1969 for the first of two Commencements that year. This one was for four-year graduates; the second, for three-year grads, was on July 4. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

So unusual was the setup that when ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, under President Hedley Reynolds, returned to a single-Commencement format in 1971, it was hailed by the Lewiston Sun Journal in its lead editorial. “The change is preferable to the confusing, double Commencements” of the past several years.

There have been seven locations for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencements

Until the Chapel was built in 1914, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ held Commencements downtown at a Baptist church at the corner of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Street and Main Street, near where the venerable Sam’s Italian Restaurant is.

Here are all the venues:

• 1867 to 1913: Baptist church on Main Street (except in 1876)
• 1876: Lewiston City Hall
• 1914 to 1948: Gomes Chapel
• 1949 to 1966: Lewiston Armory on Central Street
• 1967: Alumni Gym
• 1968: Alumni Gym and Chapel
• 1969: Alumni Gym and Chapel
• 1970: Alumni Gym
• 1971 onward: Historic Quad in front of Coram Library (rain site: Merrill Gymnasium)

The first outdoor Commencement was in 1971

Alumni Gym was to be the site of the 1971 event, but lore tells us that students asked President Reynolds if it could be moved outdoors.

His assent is about the best “yes” a president has ever made.

A scene from the first outdoor ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement, in 1971. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In 1989, the late Peter Gomes ’65 praised the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Commencement tradition that had evolved under Reynolds. “When I took my degree, in 1965, [Commencement] was in the overheated and underventilated Lewiston Armory, a day or two after the circus had come and gone,” wrote Gomes.

Then came 1971, the start of the modern Commencement tradition, with the “bucolic setting of the Coram Quadrangle, the Portland Brass, the piper and the procession, and most of all the elegant austerity of the ceremony itself,” Gomes wrote.

“There is neither a wasted word nor gesture on Commencement Day. It is rich in its austerity….”

The Coram “stage” also used to host a Commencement play

In chronicling its design by New York City architects who had shaped the Broadway theater district, Phillips Professor of Art and Visual Culture Rebecca Corrie noted, “Is it any wonder that the facade of Coram has become such a perfect stage for the College’s most public and important ceremonies?”

For many years, the student theater group put on a Greek play as part of Commencement Weekend.

This clip shows the 1934 performance of Aristophanes’ The Birds, staged by the 4-A Players (now The Robinson Players). The play was chosen as part of that year’s celebration of the centennial of Jonathan Stanton, famed professor and ornithologist.

The first female Commencement speaker was U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith

In this clipping from the Lewiston Daily Sun, U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith is flanked by new ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ president Hedley Reynolds (left) and President Emeritus Charles Phillips at Commencement 1967.

U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine talked about pragmatism in her 1967 address, the first by a woman.

She defined pragmatism as exercising personal freedom without being responsible to society.

“There are two sides to this glorified modern pragmatism,” Smith said. One is the attitude that “I’ll get mine in whatever way I can,” while the other is “the creed of ‘not getting involved.'”

She concluded, “If our nation is to maintain the moral fibre that is necessary to the survival of our way of life, then we must reject the glorified pragmatists who advocate cutting corners, who preach the propaganda of expecting ‘something for nothing,’ who espouse the doctrine that the ‘end justifies the means,’ and who caution against ‘getting involved on matters of principle.'”

The mace joined the academic procession in 1949

As the senior member of the faculty, Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray will lead the 2016 Commencement academic procession.

At Commencement 1949, Professor of Biology William Sawyer, Class of 1913, holds newly given mace as its creator, Leverett Cutten, Class of 1904, and President Charles Phillips look on. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

The mace symbolizes academic authority — an understandable connection, since ancient warriors used maces to bash their foes. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mace was fashioned by Leverett Cutten of the Class of 1904 and given to the college in 1949.

While many maces are topped with a crown, Cutten wanted his design to leave “no doubt about ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s being in the state of Maine,” as he said in 1949, so he fabricated pine cones and tassels to form an arch to support the garnet that sits at the top.