PHIPPSBURG, MAINE — IF it was a sunny day, perhaps a Sunday, Mainers with enough money to buy or rent a boat would cruise by Malaga Island for a peak at the curious inhabitants. It was the beginning of the 20th century, a time of unquestioned racial separation. But here on the little Casco Bay island was a true oddity: blacks, whites and mixed-race people lived together in a cooperative community.
On an average day - according to information gleaned from photographs, excavations and oral tradition - children of every shade played together, men hand fished for cod and women sat with one another, chatting outside the clapboard houses. The gapers bobbing in the bay had almost certainly heard talk of stranger things: rumors of "mentally retarded" mixed-race inhabitants, whisperings that Malaga children had horns and burrowed in tunnels. It was said ashore in Phippsburg that islanders were immoral and savage, that they ate their food uncooked and bore the telltale signs of syphilis.
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