Abyssinian Meeting House, Portland, Maine

The Abyssinian Meeting House was constructed by free blacks who came together to seek opportunity and refuge. The Meeting House became the cultural center of the community. Meetings, church services, concerts, and a segregated public school, throughout the 19th century. Its members and preachers included former enslaved people, leaders of the Underground Railroad, and unspoken advocates for the abolition of slavery in the United States.  The Meeting House closed in 1917 and was remodeled in 1924 as tenement apartments. Eventually, the City of Portland seized the building for unpaid taxes. The building sat vacant and deteriorating, nearly forgotten, until Deborah Cummings Khadraoui founded the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian Meeting House, and the building was bought in 1998 from the City.