SPRINGVALE — Noble High School junior Noah Binette will present his award-winning National History Day project called “Malaga Island, The Community That Maine Erased,” at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Sanford Springvale Historical Museum, 505 Main St.
In 1912, the state evicted more than four dozen residents of Malaga Island, off Phippsburg, eight of whom were forcibly placed in the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, according to www.magalaislandmaine.org. The state burned or removed any reminder of the mixed-race community, including exhuming all the graves on the island.
Binette has presented his project at the Smithsonian Museum for American History in Washington, D.C., the American Historical Association Convention in New York City and the Maine State Museum and Archives in Augusta. His project won first place in a National History Day competition in the exhibit category in 2014.
The program is free and open to the public and the museum is handicap accessible.
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