The Maine Anti-Slavery Society was founded by October 1834. This is the constitution for the society with signatures of its members.
The constitution states that the society will "encourage & promote the intellectual, moral & religious improvement of the free people of color, & by correcting prevailing & wicked prejudices, endeavor to obtain for them, as well as the enslaved, an equality with the whites in civil, intellectual & religious privileges; but will never countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by physical force."
This is a temperance petition that was presented to the Maine Legislature in 1845.
It was widely believed that if the manufacture and sale of liquor could be abolished, crime and poverty would disappear from society.
Women were among the most active proponents of legislation to prohibit the use of alcoholic beverages; and by the end of the century Maine had enacted the most stringent anti-liquor laws in the country.
An 1858 petition, signed mostly by women, asks the Maine Legislature to grant women the right to vote.
Women petitioned for suffrage at both the state and national level until the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave all American women voting rights in 1920.
Maine Governor Carl E. Milliken signs a Maine legislative resolution to hold a special election on Sept. 10, 1917 on a state constitutional amendment to grant woman the vote in Maine.
After 40 years of effort, the pro-woman suffrage forces in Maine got the resolution through the Maine Legislature.
At the signing ceremony are, from left, Mrs. Henry Cobb, Mrs. Carl E. Milliken, Governor Carl E. Milliken, Deborah Knox Livingstone, Florence Brooks Whitehouse, Charles Milliken, Mrs. Guy P. Gannett, Mrs. Arthur T. Balentine and Mrs. William R. Pattangall.
The woman suffrage amendment was defeated on Sept. 10. A national woman suffrage amendment passed on Aug. 23, 1920.
Student Strike photograph from the Echo, Spring 1970, taken by Mike Harvey '72. The National Student Association declared a student strike across the nation when President Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia in 1970, escalating the war in Southeast Asia. A few days after student protesters at Kent State were fired upon and killed, Colby students staged a nonviolent protest, marching from the campus to the Waterville Post Office and joined the nation-wide student strike.
The caption on this UPI photo reads, "Most of these Maine Indians shown here during a state house rally last year will be sharing in a 81.5 million dollar out-of-court settlement the results of a 1972 lawsuit that claimed 12.5 million acres of land was taken from Maine's 3 Indian tribes in violation of federal law some 150 years ago."
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Truck blockade at Bill's Truck Stop, Fairfield, 1979
Independent truck owners affiliated with the newly-formed Maine Truck Owners and Operators Association blockaded the diesel pumps at Bill's Truck Stop outside of Fairfield, June 20, 1979.
Truck owners across the state of Maine blockaded gas and diesel pumps to protest the high cost of diesel fuel. The truckers, who were mostly from central Maine, had a list of 10 demands including a freeze on diesel prices, a 65 mph limit, 100 percent allocation at fuel pumps, and a standard weight and length for trucks nationwide.
Nearly 2,000 people marched through Augusta on April 15, 1981, protesting President Reagan's proposed cuts in services to elderly and low-income people.
Brad Hooper held resident and non-resident petitions to save the Bryant Pond hand-cranked phone system from extinction. He was standing by the village's only crank phone booth in front of his family's general store.
The Peace Marchers (from right) Ei Ichi Kawana, Masae Tashiro, and the Rev. Ki Zu Hiromitsu, and Conn Crawford from Northern Ireland were on a trek from Maine to New York. They stopped at the University of Maine in Orono for a rally on March 31, 1982.
An informational picket line was set up at the Maine-New Brunswick, Canada, border at Houlton in March 1982 by Maine potato growers who were protesting Canadian potatoes entering the state's markets at lower prices due to the value of the Canadian dollar.
Many members of Maine's Chinese community protested the actions of the People's Republic of China when it crushed the pro-democracy student rally in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.
