Overview
- Officials confirmed his death at age 94, and no cause or funeral plans have been released.
- He served in the Maine House from 1972 to 1978 as the state’s first Black lawmaker and led the Human Resources Committee.
- He helped start Portland’s NAACP chapter and pushed a 1965 state fair-housing law that predated the federal act.
- In 1977 he filed Maine’s first bill to protect gay and lesbian residents from discrimination, laying groundwork for later law.
- His service extended to the State Board of Education and to preserving Black history, and his legacy endures in a Portland school named for him and in the leadership of his daughter, Rachel Talbot Ross, who served as House speaker.