The 1856 Project Inaugural Symposium

Abstract

The 1856 Project is a new initiative designed to acknowledge and understand the University of Maryland’s historical connections to Black life, including slavery and its legacies. Our university, founded in 1856 on land donated by the slave-owner and slave trader Charles Benedict Calvert, emerged from a regional context ofenslavement, and remains embedded in a nation shaped by white supremacy and nationalism, including segregation and exclusion. Our project begins from a recognition that those forces have long shaped campus and community constituents’ lives and opportunities. Calvert, the founder of the Maryland Agricultural College and a descendant of enslavers, enslaved 52 people in 1860, many of whom lived and worked on his Riversdale plantation, a portion of which forms a large section of the current UMD campus. The “Knowing Our History” report provides a foundation for the University of Maryland to build its work and to pursue a deeper, more prolonged analysis of UMD’s connection to slaveholders, the institution’s ties with the broader community, and how this history has shaped the culture of the school.