Isa Cruz

In the summer of 1970, with social upheaval brewing over the Vietnam War, Brunswick residents gathered on Maine Street to express political discontent writ large by protesting an ordinance which barred public gatherings, including the throwing of footballs and frisbees on the town mall.

The so-called frisbee protests are among the events featured at the Pejepscot History Center (PHC) in its newly opened exhibit on social unrest and cultural change through the 1960s and ’70s. The exhibit aims to capture what life in Brunswick was like while national anti-war, women’s liberation and civil rights protests reverberated through the community and the town’s infrastructure, demographics, music and culture shifted.

Larissa Vigue Picard, PHC’s Executive Director, said the exhibit addresses many of the era’s social and political movements.

“Vietnam, of course, is mentioned, and a protest by women who were wait staff at that time at the Stowe House, when it was a restaurant, who walked off the job and picketed,” Picard said.

These issues touched Bowdoin, too. Though campus protests against the Vietnam War were small compared to those at schools like Columbia University, alumni described the war as an “omnipresent” issue. Students also spoke out in support of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements at a time of minimal diversity among the student body. The first class of women graduated from Bowdoin in 1975, and the College had fewer than 100 Black students in the 1970s.

Beatrice Elmore, a senior at Brunswick High School, worked with the PHC over the summer. Through her research, she found that local opposition to the Vietnam War predated the draft, as Brunswick was heavily hit by wartime demands. The Naval Air Station was used as a base, and a number of young men in the town enlisted prior to the draft.

“The casualties we found stemming from Brunswick in the Vietnam War are actually people who enlisted before the draft,” Elmore said. “That led to this very anti-Vietnam setting where it was people who were watching the guys who they went to high school with go enlist in the war and die before it was mandatory.”

Outreach manager Sarah Sharpton brought together high school and college students to complete oral histories and write panels for the walls of the exhibit. Picard noted that the oral histories allowed younger students and older residents to learn from one another about issues such as Vietnam.

“They used the oral histories as a basis for understanding the time period, with a focus on activism and protest in the area,” she said. “The folks who were interviewed were really appreciative of the students wanting to talk with them.”

Many of the items for the exhibit were drawn from the PHC’s extensive collections. As the fourth oldest historical society in Maine, the PHC has centuries-old materials relating to the towns of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell.

“We date to 1888, but our collections really date to the very early part of the 18th century,” Picard said. “We have more than 200,000 items in the collection of all kinds: from archival paper-based items, maps and diaries and deeds and documents of all kinds, to artwork and massive photo collections—about 28,000 photos. We also have a huge object collection and textile collection.”

Elmore was able to help with the oral histories. Her favorite piece in the exhibit is a brick of the Skolfield-Whittier house, a notable old Victorian-era home, with the words “Shoot Nixon” carved into it.

“It really encapsulates how a lot of the conflict was at a national level but was tied to the state and local level,” Elmore said. “We also heard some really interesting perspectives on the music scene and a lot of the counterculture.”

Barbara Desmarais, an area resident who volunteers for the center, gave her set of vintage Mattel dolls to be shown in the exhibit. Her fashion queen Barbie has a set of wigs manufactured by Mattel, as well as clothes hand-sewn by Desmarais’s mother to fit the doll. Desmarais noted that Barbie was one of the earliest dolls made for young girls that was not a baby doll or a bridal doll, representing a more liberated view of women emerging during the ’60s and ’70s.

“That little doll was a way for girls to imagine themselves in a bigger world doing things after school,” Desmarais said. “Before, it was basically a ‘wife and mother’ kind of imagination.”

The exhibit opened to the public this week. Picard said that the exhibit will most likely be on display through the spring in the upstairs gallery at the history center, located downtown at 159 Park Row.