Local History   National History   Maryland History   Tripod   Awards   Leadership  

 

 

 

Maryland History:

 

In 1856, on the site now occupied by Morrill Hall, Charles Benedict Calvert, a wealthy planter and later congressman from Riverdale, established the Maryland Agricultural College. After the Civil War, the College became one of the nation's first land-grant colleges under the Morrill Act of 1867, and by 1900, had begun to bring prosperity to the state through it's agricultural outreach programs. As it did so, it changed the state, and was itself transformed. By the early Twentieth Century, the College had expanded its offerings to include engineering, business and the liberal arts. Women were admitted as students in 1912. By 1929, they numbered more than 300, had graduated from every college in what was now a university, and had become active participants in all aspects of campus life.

Shortly before World War I, graduate work began. In 1920, the College merged with the long established professional schools in Baltimore, and the Maryland Agricultural College changed its name to the University of Maryland. Along with much of American society, the University was further transformed by World War II

The University revised its curriculum to provide a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences and reshaped tis offerings in advanced studies to include a series of majors that would serve the emerging needs of industry, government and society for highly educated citizens. However, like the state of which it is a part, the University of Maryland was still segregated along racial lines, and African-Americas were barred from attending the College Park campus.

Beginning in the post-war period, Maryland's black citizens asserted their right to attend the state's premier public university with greater force and power. In 1950, a successful lawsuit required the university to allow a young black man, Parrin Mitchell of Baltimore, to attend graduate classes at College Park. In the following year, Hiram Whittle, also of Baltimore, became the first African-American undergraduate student admitted to the institution. Still it was not until the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that the University of Maryland Board of Regents agreed to accept all qualified students without regard to race. The once segregated college is now a multicultural, accredited, international university.