University of Maryland publishes first report on school’s connections to slavery

The University of Maryland, College Park this month published its first research report on the institution’s connections to slavery, detailing how founder Charles B. Calvert was a descendant of enslavers and owned at least 55 slaves who worked on his Riverside plantation, land that makes up part of UMD’s campus. As part of an international consortium called Universities Studying Slavery, UMD launched The 1856 Project last year, named for the founding year of the university, then called the Maryland Agricultural College. Along with Calvert, who was a descendant of Lord Baltimore George Calvert, several of the college’s 600 initial financers were slaveholders or had ties to the slave economy.