UMBC History Faculty Statement on Systemic Racial Injustice

We grieve the recent and brutal killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd. They represent only the latest in a long pattern of violence directed against Black men and women in the United States, violence that has been all too often enacted or enabled by police. These recent killings unfolded against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, a pandemic that has disproportionately taken Black lives as a result of systemic racial and economic discrimination. 

We understand why people have taken to the public square to express their outrage and their frustration. As historians, we know that unrest of this nature also has a long history in human societies. As scholars, we recognize that peaceful protests, property damage, and civil uprising are all ways that oppressed people have expressed themselves when the state refuses to address their needs.  Those who critique the current protests for failing to adhere to a simplistic model of the 1960s U.S. civil rights movement distort a history in which civil actions that began peacefully often ended in violence, sometimes by the very police officers charged with maintaining peace. 

The faculty of the Department of History at UMBC has broad interest in protest, power, and change in history. We recognize our responsibility to help illuminate how societal structures have enforced racial and economic inequality. We work to illustrate how individuals have struggled to shape better worlds, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. 

Our study of the past tells us that real change only begins with protest. It also requires sustained dialogue and political engagement. As a discipline, history advances methods of inquiry, discussion, and interpretation that can create a solid foundation for advancing social change. As a Department, we are committed to creating an inclusive atmosphere for the kinds of critical inquiry and community engagement that can help challenge systems of oppression. 

For a tool to help you talk about race from a historically grounded position, look here: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race

-The UMBC History Department

Like many Americans, watching multiple incidents of deadly violence against black people unfold before our eyes has left us feeling demoralized and distraught, aghast and angry. Not only have we been forced to grapple with the impact of a global pandemic, we have been forced to confront the reality that, despite gains made in the past fifty years, we are still a nation riven by inequality and racial division. The state of our democracy feels fragile and precarious.

Once again, we struggle to make sense of the senseless. Once again, we bear witness to our country’s troubled history of racial violence, from Freddie Gray and Eric Garner to Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin. Once again, we try to cope as best as we can, whether suffering in silence, participating in protests, or engaging in conversations that evoke all of our emotions. Once again, we try to explain to our children that which cannot be explained. Once again, we pray for justice and we pray for peace. Once again.

We express our deepest sympathy to the families and communities of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the far too many preceding them whose needless deaths were brought about by unjustified violence. We hope that their pain and sorrow compel America to confront its tortured racial past, and that this moment becomes the impetus for our nation to address racism and social inequities in earnest.

Although it will be a monumental task, the past is replete with examples of ordinary people working together to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. History is a guide to a better future and demonstrates that we can become a better society—but only if we collectively demand it from each other and from the institutions responsible for administering justice. 

Frederick Douglass famously said, “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground….The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle.” At this pivotal moment when the eyes of the nation and the world are upon Minneapolis, will we join the struggle to seek justice and equality? Will we heed the call of courageous figures throughout history who spoke out against slavery, marched on for voting rights, and sat in for basic equality? Will we challenge the nation to live up to its founding ideals? In the memory of those taken from us and for the good of the country, I hope that we do.

2020 History Department Student Awardees

John Bell-Clifford Maas Prize

Ghina Ammar

Ghina will graduate in May 2020 with a dual degree in History and Political Science. She has worked as the Social Sciences editor for the UMBC Review for two years. Ghina received an Undergraduate Research Award for research on British Antisemitism in the late 19th century with Dr. Ritschel,and will present her research at URCAD in April. After graduation, she hopes to either serve in Americorps for a year, or work in D.C., and will be applying to law school in September. 

Emily Carter

Emily is a History major and Psychology minor with a 3.92 GPA.  She is a Maryland State Delegate Scholarship recipient and an alumna of the James W. Rouse Scholars Program. 

Emily Meehan

Emily is a History major and Public History minor with a 3.786 GPA. She is an aspiring archivist who is carrying out an internship with the Priddy Library and a member of the Honors Society.

Matthew Novick

Matthew is a History major working towards a B.A. in Historical Studies and an M.A. in Public History through the Accelerated B.A./M.A. Program. He has interned with the National Electronics Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and is currently pursuing internships related to exhibit curation and archival work. Matthew is working towards a future career in museum work or the civil service.

History Department Student Achievement Award

Jeanette Richardson

Jeanette is a History major and a Public History minor. She has been President of the History Student Council and co-leader of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honors society. She presented at last year’s URCAD and also has interned at The Baltimore Museum of Industry, Mental Health Association of MD, and UMBC's Special Collections.

John D. Reese Memorial Prize in History

Sarah Driver

Sarah graduated in December 2019, Magma Cum Laude, with a B.A. in History and a GPA of 3.8. She wrote an Honors thesis entitled “The Domestic Pianist

The Impact of the Parlor Piano on Middle Class Domestic Life in Nineteenth Century America.”

Congratulations to our Spring 2020 Master's in Historical Studies graduates!

Andrew Arvizu, “Historical Simulations and the Mechanics of Conquest” (Advisor: Prof. Ritschel)

Morgan Miller, “A Town Within a Forest”:  The Walking Tour of Washington Grove, 1873-Present (Advisor: Dr. Meringolo)

Kevin Muhitch, “We are the First to Unabashedly Go Out and Ask for a Prison”: Deindustrialization and the Politics of Prison Siting in Maryland” (Advisor: Dr. Musgrove)

Finny Rocca “Sexuality, Socialism, & Sandals: Studying the Obsolescence of Uranian Epistemology, 1867-1933” (Advisor: Dr. Ritschel)

Zachariah Tucker, “Quarantined and Sequestered: Tattoo Charlie’s and Tattoo Regulation in Baltimore, 1938-1970” (Advisor: Dr. Blair)