Highlighting History on Our Doorstep

Chakkalakal's chapter describes how her students collaborated with the museum to stage their exhibition. Cotton Town focused on Bath, Maine, where the museum is located-about ten miles north of Bowdoin's Brunswick campus-and the city's role in sustaining the practice of slavery in the southern states before the Civil War.

Bath was a city of sea captains and shipbuilders whose efforts provided the means to transport commodities like cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane, all of which were produced by enslaved people on southern plantations. Cotton was one commodity in particular that linked Maine to the southern slave states, which provided the raw material for lucrative textile mills in town such as Brunswick and Lewiston. So, despite the fact that slavery was illegal in Maine, many in the state, particularly in places like Bath, supported the practice due to its economic importance.

Advised by the museum's educational team, thirty-five students from Chakkalakal's introductory Africana studies course researched, designed, and installed Cotton Town. They highlighted artifacts that underlined previously understudied connections between Maine's maritime history and the Atlantic slave trade, including letters, ships' logs, and bills of sale. "Working with MMM gave students access to objects and events that helped them to understand the local and immediate impact of the history of slavery," said Chakkalakal. "Moreover," she added, "students were able to gain skills beyond the theoretical understanding of the meaning of Africana studies"- an interdisciplinary program that explores how Africa and the African diaspora have influenced the modern world.