Craig Hickman, who won a state Senate special election on Tuesday, would be an unusual candidate in any political contest. Inevitably, though, he stands out through a category that — much more than most would like to admit — has long dominated American life.

The competing narratives were laid out recently in the New York Times’s “1619” project, which puts slavery at the center of European conquest of the “New World,” and the “1776” project, hastily assembled at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, which presents the Founders as just, far-sighted statesmen — even if many of them happened to own slaves.

Hickman is the first black Mainer to serve in the Senate since John Jenkins of Lewiston, whose single term ended in 1998. And there have been only four House members: Hickman; Richard Evans, just elected from Dover-Foxcroft; Rachel Talbot Ross, now assistant majority leader; and Talbot Ross’s father, Gerald Talbot.

But Hickman is unusual in other ways. He is an organic farmer from Winthrop who also supports certain gun rights. He speaks eloquently about how accommodating slavery is at the root of the Electoral College — and produces prize-winning corn and tomatoes.

Every candidate has a story; Hickman’s is compelling. The son of a Tuskegee airman and a “wise woman,” he came of age in Milwaukee, which he’s called “the most segregated city in the U.S.”

It may not have been till he came to Maine that he truly felt at home. And this is a rare place where his race neither won nor lost votes — though that might not have been true had he run in Portland or Lewiston, with substantial populations of people of color.

Yet even here, it is not possible to escape history.

Like all contemporary campaigns, there were many mailers. Those from candidates celebrate achievements; those from parties mostly beat up on the opposition.

One from the Maine Democratic Party charged Hickman’s opponent, William Guerrette, with “using his social media platform to promote dangerous lies and misinformation.”

The leading image was from Guerrette’s Facebook page, proclaiming “Fact check this.” The “fact” was that “The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democratic support.”

This supposed “misinformation” is completely true: The 14th Amendment was adopted, a century and a half ago, solely with Republican support.

The screen shot carried a Facebook warning of “missing context.” Well, here’s the context ­ — though not the one USA Today lamely offered, that “there were few Democrats in Congress” back then. The important point is that, over the past century, the parties have completely reversed roles.

This polarity shift, accelerating with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act enfranchising Southern Black men (and now women) for the first time since Reconstruction, is an overwhelming fact, not paralleled in any other major democracy. We still haven’t quite understood its significance.

In the 1850s, the then-new Republican Party united to oppose expansion of territorial slavery. It progressed to abolition, and finally, in three great amendments historian Eric Foner calls “the Second Founding,” equal political and citizenship rights.

Back then, the Democratic Party was the vehicle for racism, the Ku Klux Klan and, ultimately, Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.

In the 1930s, things became complicated. Northern Democrats brought liberalism to prominence but the party retained its backward-looking one-party rule throughout the old Confederacy.

Franklin Roosevelt’s four administrations saw the greatest upsurge of economic justice in American history, unequalled since, but racial justice was nowhere to be found.

That’s why Black units remained segregated throughout World War II — it was Harry Truman who finally integrated the armed forces — and why Black veterans were denied the fruits of the GI bill for college, and why they were red-lined out of new housing developments.

This painful conundrum was finally resolved after Lyndon Johnson championed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, setting Democrats on the path toward full equality.

Southern states have since adopted the Republican brand of racial intolerance and vote suppression. Still, as late as the 1990s, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell delicately managed Southern Democrats still chairing important committees.

Those Democrats are gone, replaced by Republicans more than happy to indulge “white backlash,” and finally by Trumpism, adopting white supremacy.

Republicans have wandered far from being “the party of Lincoln,” while Democrats have finally embraced equality under law. The nation is choosing, once again, which side prevails.

Craig Hickman will continue to serve honorably and well. Yet it would be far better, some day, for him — for all of us — to be judged, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, reporter, opinion writer and author for 36 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at: drooks@tds.net 

 

(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named Gerald Talbot, one of four Black House members in Maine history.)

 

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