With Justice for All : A Three Act Play

With Justice for All : A Three Act Play

With Justice For All leads its reader through the drama surrounding the potential 1876 eviction of French families from their homes on disputed land in the St. John River Valley of Aroostook County, Maine. A play in two languages, and a play that illustrates late-nineteenth-century Franco-American bilingualism, it moves from rural family life, to the Maine state legislature, and then to the courthouse in a unique display of the cultural range of the Maine citizenry of that era. By the drama’s end, playwright Guy Dubay has made a reassuring claim in defense of the state’s judicial system – helping in this instance to protect the rights and traditions of early Franco-American landholders. From the text: "The State of Maine, in 1868, had deeded a million acres of land, which included the St. John Valley, to the European and North American Railroad (E. & N.A. R.R.). The events in the decade to follow were to involve the Valley farmers in the state’s legislative process...Not until 1876, as the nation celebrated its centennial, did one hundred and forty-two families in Madawaska and Frenchville, Maine, receive eviction notices as a result of the impending bankruptcy of the European and North American Railroad. The French-American farmers, practically without formal education, for a time were at the mercy of lawyers and business people who accused Valley settlers with squatting. [SPOILER ALERT!] The drama ended in the State’s Supreme Court where the dilemma of these citizens’ rights to their property versus wholesale grants of state land to E. & N.A. R.R. was resolved."

Dubay, Guy F.

Title VII: Project BRAVE Bulletin

1976

Français and English

Book

1870s, Madawaska, Maine

No

1976

73

Madawaska, Maine

None