University of Southern Maine

News Releases

USM’s African American Collection of Maine Acquires OOB Guest House Register

July 30 2008

Where did Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton stay when they played the Old Orchard Beach pier?  They, and many other African Americans, including poets Countee Cullen and W.E.B. Du Boise, stayed at the Cummings Guest House, a small boarding house located at 110 Portland Ave., Old Orchard Beach.

USM’s African American Collection in USM’s Glickman Family Library, Portland, recently acquired the Cummings Guest House register, allowing scholars the opportunity to view the signatures and addresses of Rose Cummings’ guests and the dates they visited Maine. The register has 182 pages that include 3,000-3,500 entries signed by guests, demonstrating the rich cultural world of the Cummings family and Old Orchard Beach.  

Rose Cummings began welcoming African-American guests in 1923.  She accommodated musicians who performed locally but were unable to find motels that would take African-Americans. Rose managed the house until her death in 1959 and her children continued running the house into the 1990s when it was sold.  In 2004, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Susie R. Bock, director of USM’s Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, which is home to the African American Collection, is pleased that this piece of local African-American history is remaining in Maine and is now part of a larger collection that looks at the experiences of Maine’s African-American communities from colonial times to the present.

Editor’s Note: Susie Bock can be reached at 780-4269.  For help arranging interviews, contact Bob Caswell or Judie O’Malley at the phone numbers at the top of this release. 

For more information about USM’s African American Collection of Maine, see http://library.usm.maine.edu/specialcollections/aahistory.html.

For photos, go to:
http://www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/0708releases/cummingsone.jpg

http://www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/0708releases/cummingstwo.jpg

http://www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/0708releases/cummingsthree.jpg

Photo caps:

1. Detail of Cummings Guest House page showing “Duke Ellington and Wife, NYC and Mercer Ellington, NYC.”

2. Cummings Guest House register, part of USM’s African American Collection of Maine.

3. Cummings Guest House, 110 Portland Ave., Old Orchard Beach, as it appears today.

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