With Dr. Carol Gardiner and respondent Bob Greene
A Speaker Series event Hosted by Atlantic Black Box
Wednesday, May 28, 2025 6:00 pm ET on zoom
Next Wednesday, Atlantic Black Box is honored to host a presentation by Dr. Carol Gardner that explores how the experiences of two 19th-century Portland families—one Black and one white—help to shed light on what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery.
What did it mean to live in a so-called “free state” like Maine during the 19th century? This presentation discusses life from the perspectives of two Portland, Maine families: one Black and one white. The Rubys and Gordons of Portland were neighbors, contemporaries, attended church and school together, and yet they were worlds apart, separated by their political beliefs, family cultures, and race. The Rubys were well known abolitionists and equal rights activists; the Gordons, prominent shipmasters and owners—among them, the only American hanged for participating in the transatlantic slave trade.
The experiences of these two families help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.
Dr. Carol Gardner has more than 30 years’ experience as a writer, journalist and communicator. She earned a Ph.D. in English from The Johns Hopkins University, taught at Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, and Florida State Universities, and has published both fiction and nonfiction pieces in a wide variety of books and periodicals including The Washington Post, The Women’s Review of Books, and the Portland Press Herald.
Dr. Gardner is the author of two narrative histories, The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World (2019) and The Divided North: Black & White Families in the Age of Slavery (2025).
Bob Greene is a Maine historian and a former AP tennis writer. He is at least an 8th-generation Mainer, as his five time great-grandparents were married in New Gloucester in 1783. Bob descends from the Ruby family, founders of the Abyssinian Meeting House. He was a contributor to Maine’s Visible Black History (H.H. Price and Gerald Talbot). Bob teaches Maine history through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine.
