On March 6, 1856, the State of Maryland granted a charter for the creation of Maryland Agricultural College. Opening its doors to 34 eager young men in 1859, the college survived a disastrous fire in 1912 to become the University of Maryland in 1920. Today the school is a top-ranked, public research land-grant university with over 100 undergraduate majors, 120 graduate programs, and 35,000 students. Campus History Series: University of Maryland honors the history of the university and all who have contributed to its progress: faculty, staff, students, and alumni. From its earliest years, their labors and love for the institution have led to the creation of an intellectually vibrant and culturally diverse university that serves proudly as the flagship campus of the University System of Maryland. Images from the University of Maryland Archives and other campus sources, many never before published, illustrate the University of Maryland's rise from a "cow college" to an internationally recognized academic, artistic, and athletic powerhouse in the 21st century.

Winner of the Cundill History Prize Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR A breathtakingly original work of history that uncovers a massive enslaved persons' revolt that almost changed the face of the Americas Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Blood on the River also won two of the highest honors for works of history, capturing both the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Cundill History Prize in 2021. A book with profound relevance for our own time, Blood on the River “fundamentally alters what we know about revolutionary change” according to Cundill Prize juror and NYU history professor Jennifer Morgan. Nearly two hundred sixty years ago, on Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice—in present-day Guyana—launched a rebellion that came amazingly close to succeeding. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas. Michael Ignatieff, chair of the Cundill Prize jury, declared that Blood on the River “tells a story so dramatic, so compelling that no reader will be able to put the book down.” Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the rebellion collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars has constructed what Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner calls “a gripping narrative that brings to life a forgotten world.”

Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.

Information is provided about thirty public colleges and universities at which students can receive an Ivy League education at a fraction of the price of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. --book cover.

The debate over affirmative action has raged for over four decades, with little give on either side. Most agree that it began as noble effort to jump-start racial integration; many believe it devolved into a patently unfair system of quotas and concealment. Now, with the Supreme Court set to rule on a case that could sharply curtail the use of racial preferences in American universities, law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor offer a definitive account of what affirmative action has become, showing that while the objective is laudable, the effects have been anything but. Sander and Taylor have long admired affirmative action's original goals, but after many years of studying racial preferences, they have reached a controversial but undeniable conclusion: that preferences hurt underrepresented minorities far more than they help them. At the heart of affirmative action's failure is a simple phenomenon called mismatch. Using dramatic new data and numerous interviews with affected former students and university officials of color, the authors show how racial preferences often put students in competition with far better-prepared classmates, dooming many to fall so far behind that they can never catch up. Mismatch largely explains why, even though black applicants are more likely to enter college than whites with similar backgrounds, they are far less likely to finish; why there are so few black and Hispanic professionals with science and engineering degrees and doctorates; why black law graduates fail bar exams at four times the rate of whites; and why universities accept relatively affluent minorities over working class and poor people of all races. Sander and Taylor believe it is possible to achieve the goal of racial equality in higher education, but they argue that alternative policies -- such as full public disclosure of all preferential admission policies, a focused commitment to improving socioeconomic diversity on campuses, outreach to minority communities, and a renewed focus on K-12 schooling -- will go farther in achieving that goal than preferences, while also allowing applicants to make informed decisions. Bold, controversial, and deeply researched, Mismatch calls for a renewed examination of this most divisive of social programs -- and for reforms that will help realize the ultimate goal of racial equality.

In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.

The Critical Black Studies Series celebrates its third volume, Transnational Blackness. The series, under the general supervision of Manning Marable, features readers and anthologies examining challenging topics within the contemporary black experience--in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and across the African Diaspora. Previously published in the series are Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives: The Racism, Criminal Justice, and Law Reader (September 2007) and Seeking Higher Ground: The Hurricane Katrina Crisis, Race, and Public Policy Reader (January 2008). Celebrating the third volume of CRITICAL BLACK STUDIES Series Editor: Manning Marable For many decades, black intellectuals in the United States have thought of racism as a global phenomenon. Transnational Blackness presents, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the history, critical analysis, and theoretical perspectives of key black scholars and activists on the transnational dynamics of modern race and racism throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The book examines the social thought of, among others: W.E.B. DuBois, Eslanda Goode Robeson, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, and Michael Manley.