Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Adam Fried picture

Almost two centuries ago, the Rev. L. Jerome Fowler's great-great-grandfather was a slave in Prince George's County.

Adam Francis Plummer was the personal servant to Charles Benedict Calvert, a Southern aristocrat who founded the Maryland Agricultural College, this university's 19th century precursor.

Plummer could read and write and was even given a plot of land to develop his passion for growing roses. He accompanied Calvert everywhere and was involved in all of his projects, Fowler, a family historian, said.

This just leaves one question - did Plummer help build this university?

Before the Civil War, Calvert handed the university's presidency over to Benjamin Hallowell, an abolitionist who accepted the position on the condition that the university end its practice of slavery. But nowhere in Fowler's archives do his descendants mention actually accompanying Calvert to the campus.

This indefinite history has troubled administrators who have grappled with how to interpret its ties to slavery, while other universities around the country have investigated their pasts. State lawmakers apologized for its role in the institution last year, but afterward, university President Dan Mote said the university lacked the evidence to make any admissions.

The university charged archivist Liz McAllister with investigating the history for one a day week last semester, but with little time and scarce resources, her research produced more questions than answers.

Next year, a two-semester class of 30 undergraduates, led by history professor Ira Berlin, will pick up where she left off.

"It's important that we get to bottom of this and know the true roots of the university and how it developed and if slaves were involved in building it," Fowler said. "We need to know."

Though it's still in the planning process, a draft of the class' syllabus shows it will spend the first semester investigating and understanding the history and role of slavery in the Mid-Atlantic states before splitting off into research groups and specifically examining the university the second semester.

So far, Berlin plans to investigate old censuses from the 1850s, slave schedules, land records, national archives, the state archives and the Maryland Historical society in Baltimore.

Continued...

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