Today, the lives and the cruel 1912 expulsion of the Black and mixed-race residents of Phippsburg’s Malaga Island are topics of study for Maine historians and others — and, as writer Jaed Coffin explains in our January 2023 issue, increasingly the source material for novels, poetry, art installations, and more. But in 1980, when historian William David Barry wrote about Malaga Island for Down East, the story of the Malagans was largely forgotten or misunderstood. Click here to read the 43-year-old article that helped bring this dark chapter into the light.