June McKenzie, a fifth-generation Mainer, was born in Portland, Maine, in 1929, one of twelve children. Her mother, Florence Eastman Williams, was a Portland native; her father, a truck driver, was a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. She graduated from Portland High School in 1947; she attended Northeastern Business College for one year, and took several classes at the American Institute of Banking while employed at People’s Heritage Bank, where she worked for twenty-two years. She married and had eight children, and at the time of this interview had two grandchildren. She is a longtime member of the NAACP in Portland, and an active member of Green Memorial AME Zion Church. She has been active in the civil rights movement in Maine, including ...