Social Justice

The University of Maryland’s 1856 Project, part of the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, has been awarded a generous $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation Public Knowledge program to establish a two-year research incubator program that will investigate the legacy of slavery at the university and document histories of enslaved individuals, ensuring their stories and contributions are recognized, honored and preserved.

As a part of the year-long programing surrounding our new exhibit, “Rising Up: 100 Years of Student Activism for Justice and Civil Rights at the University of Maryland,” UMD Libraries is excited to invite you to Creating Liberating Spaces: Activists, Archivists, Librarians and Social Justice, a Talk with Mariame Kaba, on November 2, 2023 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Due to limited seating, registration is required. Learn more and register.

UMD Libraries is excited to announce the “Rising Up: 100 Years of Student Activism for Justice and Civil Rights at the University of Maryland” exhibition in Hornbake Library. To celebrate, join us on Wednesday, October 25, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. for an opening reception. Meet the exhibition’s curators, hear from speakers who will share experiences about their struggle for civil rights and social justice, and take a guided tour of the exhibit.

A group of undergraduate students have created a limited podcast series using archives from the Hornbake Library. The series, With Love & Struggle—researched and written by Janete Amaya, Hannah Bray, Maliyah Daniels, Ashley Mazur, Katherine Guerrero Rivera, Viviane Stackhouse, and Fibee Ybanez—dives into the Libraries’ archival collection of Off Our Backs, an underground feminist magazine that ran from 1970 to 2008.

On Wednesday, May 3, a group of faculty, staff, students, and alumni gathered in Hornbake Library for an alumni panel reflecting on the campus’ protests against the Vietnam War in 1970. The “30 Days in May: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement at UMD” panel, hosted by UMD Libraries, invited five alumni back to the university marking 53 years since the historic protests.

“It’s okay to be different. You are special and important just because of who you are.” from "It’s Okay to be Different" by Todd Parr Celebrating differences  was a key theme throughout the Libraries’ first-ever Storytime in Drag event on Monday, April 24. Students, faculty, and staff gathered in McKeldin Library to celebrate the university’s recognition of Pride Month with performers D’Manda Martini and Bella Naughty, who read from banned children’s books (see list below) as well as other books featuring LGBTQ+ affirming themes.

The UMD Libraries is pleased to announce that Lae’l Hughes-Watkins has been named the inaugural Associate Director for Engagement, Inclusion, and Reparative Archiving in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Hughes-Watkins assumes this new leadership role after serving for over three years as University Archivist. (A search to fill the now-vacant archivist role will be conducted soon.)

The Libraries are proud to play an instrumental role in the 2022-23 interdisciplinary curriculum program “Decolonizing Education to Meet the Demand of Climate Change: resilient Adaptive Climate Technology (reACT) Testbed Lab.” Over the course of one year, students from across seven departments, from Education to Architecture, will work collaboratively on an architecture and engineering project that’s guided by indigenous knowledge in order to live more sustainably in the face of climate change.

Stated simply and factually, the US Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, effectively shifts the authority for reproductive decisions from individual women and people who can become pregnant, to state governments.

UMD Libraries is joining USMAI in condemning the recent bomb threats against Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Read the full statement.