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The Rev. Amos N. Freeman holds a selected place in Maine's history because he was the first publicly acknowledged leader of a black community in the State. There were leaders among the people before him, such as Reuben Ruby, the Rev. Samuel Snowden, and interim ministers at the Abyssinian Meetinghouse in Portland -- men who paved the way for Freeman; but he was the first to be hired full-time as a minister at the Abyssinian.

Black Portlanders had declared in 1826, through a public letter from Ruby and others, that they would no longer tolerate the racial discrimination they were experiencing in the City's white churches. The Abyssinian Society was born, the funds were solicited, the building was erected on Munjoy Hill, and a black congregation became visible.

Freeman was hired in 1841 and stayed for 10 fruitful years. This was a period in the North when blacks were forming their own mutual aid societies, religious congregations, and schools. Freeman came from that group of reformers. He was educated at the Oneida Institute and taught at a black school in New Jersey, where the Rev. Amos Beman, who had been an interim preacher at the Abyssinian, praised Freeman for his work. This early 19th century networking among black educators and ministers likely landed The Rev. Amos N. Freeman in Portland, Maine.

We know about Freeman from the research of Shoshana Hoose, who wrote for the Maine Sunday Telegram and Portland Press Herald and collaborated with Karine Odlin on the documentary Anchor of the Soul, 1994, and from descendants of Rev. Freeman, particularly his great, great-grandson, Christopher Rabb, who is writing Freeman's biography.

The new minister focused immediately on employment, temperance, and abolishing slavery. On Freeman's watch there were anti-slavery speakers and testimonies from runaways from slavery, such as Lewis Clark, and Negro Conventions, such as the Maine and New Hampshire one in 1849 that condemned the liquor traffic. He was a known Underground Railroad agent. Documentation on blacks involved as humanitarians is hard to come by, but Freeman's granddaughter has written about his involvement in hiding and helping runaways from slavery while ministering in Portland; and William Still writes in his 1879 book, The Underground Railroad, about how when Freeman was a minister in New York he helped a runaway girl reach Canada.

Freeman apparently preached at white churches to raise funds for the Abyssinian. One such occasion is reported because of a commentary on racial prejudice. Dr. George E. Adams, minister at the First Parish Church in Brunswick, had invited Freeman to preach with him at a Sunday service. Two seafaring white men left the church as soon as they noticed Freeman. The next day a street corner preacher shouted to his audience: "A wonderful miracle took place on the hill in the great church, yesterday! God sent a colored messenger from heaven to declare his will unto the people. He sat down in the pulpit, and without opening his mouth he cast out two devils." (Story courtesy of the Archives of the First Parish Church, Brunswick.)

By the mid-1830s in Portland a segregated school for black children had evolved. It had a white principal for a few years, but by 1845 Freeman became principal and was paid less than the white man had been five years before. Money was always a problem for the church, and particularly for its minister even if he doubled as pastor and black school principal.

In 1851, Rev. Freeman left Portland and became a long-term pastor at the Siloam Presbyterian Church in New York City. The photo of him on this page was taken during that period.

Amos Noah Freeman died in 1893 and left a burning legacy of social reform and black leadership in New York and Maine.

This is a sample entry from the book Maine's Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People by H.H. Price and Gerald E. Talbot. This comprehensive 448 page book with 240 photographs was published in August 2006.

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