University of Maryland Activists Reunite!

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Bertell Ollman Denied Department Chair at the University of Maryland

Editor's Note: Bertell Ollman was denied the the position of Chair of the Government and Politics Deptarment solely on the basis of his publically held Marxist views. Since Bertell deserved the post and is also a helluva nice guy, we are including him in the faculty section anyway.
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Dan Carter and UM's First Black History Class

UM’s sad Jim Crow legacy began to crumble radically in the 1960’s as the impact of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements found its way to College Park.
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Philosophy Professors Denied Tenure in 1970

In the spring of 1970, two popular philosophy professors were denied tenure in a move that eventually triggered a sit-in in the Skinner Building to prevent the loss of teachers Peter Goldstone and Dick Roelofs.

You may read about this tenure controversy in a Spring 1970 Diamondback article (PDF format)

The Night the Administration Building Didn't Burn Down

On May 14, 1970, students battled cops and the National Guard for control of the UM campus. The university was on strike against war, racism and other injustices at the time. It was the most violent night of the 1970 demonstrations. It would have been a lot more destructive but for the raw courage of one college professor.
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Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was denied entrance to the University of Maryland Law School in 1930. In 1933, he took the case of Donald Gaines Murray who had been similarly treated by UM and won. The Murray case was a big step toward the 1954 Brown decision.
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Gladys Jefferson: The Union's Inspiration

There have been some fine teachers at UM, but one of the best teachers did not hold any academic position and did not have regular office hours. That person was Gladys Jefferson, president of AFSCME Local 1072, the campus workers’ union.
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Kerry Fahey & the SDS Merry Pranksters

The Sixties were famous not only of its radical politics, but for its radical experiments in music. John Coltrane pushed the limits of Jazz improvisation. Jimmy Hendrix pushed the limits of the electric guitar. Joanie Mitchell pushed the limits of the song as a poetic art form.
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35th Anniversary Memoir from a Route One Brigadonna

Susan MacAdams reflects on her life going back to the days when she occupied Route One in 1970--and what a life it's been.....
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BBC Radio Documentary about Judi Bari

BBC Radio broadcast a half-hour Judi Bari documentary in December 2004. Judi was a UM activist in the 1970's and went on to become a leader of California's Save the Redwoods movement. She died of breast cancer in 1997. Download MP3

Donald Gaines Murray

In 1935, just after his graduation from Amherst College, Donald Gaines Murray sought admission to the Maryland law school in 1935 only to learn that it did not accept blacks.
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Early evening, April 4— A shot rings out in the Memphis sky...

by Bob Simpson I heard the loud thumping of footsteps coming up the basement stairs. Something was very wrong. Marie appeared at the kitchen entrance, distraught and out of breath. Martin Luther King had just been shot dead in Memphis. It's all over the news. Come downstairs. Now.
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Forty Years in the Fray

In 1998, longtime UM activist Richard J. Ochs (Dick to his friends) wrote a 91 page memoir of his 40 years in the Movement. Dick is still an activist and recently fought off a cancer invasion. In many ways, Dick represents the spirit of the 1960's at UM and how that spirit followed stayed with him up to the present day
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Hiram Whittle

Hiram Whittle was the first Black undergraduate of the University of Maryland. Initially refused admission into UM's Engineering School, he became part of an NAACP lawsuit and was admitted in 1951.
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Judi Bari Survives Character Assassination

Judi Bari was a UM activist in the early 1970's. She later moved to California and became a leader of the the movement to save Northern California's redwood forests. Judi survived an assassination attempt in 1991, but succumbed to breast cancer in 1995. A scurrilous "biography" of Judi appeared in 2005. This article helps set the record straight.
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Maryland in the Days of Jim Crow

by Bob Simpson YMCA Camp Letts sits at the end of a peninsula jutting out into the Rhode River near Edgewater, Maryland. On a clear day, you can see all the way to where the South River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The camp was established in 1906 and has been in its present location since 1922.
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Michael Tabor on Social Justice

Mike Tabor was active in UM SDS in the mid 1960's, particularly around civil rights issues.In 2005, he was given the Paul Shnitzer Social Justice and Ethics Award at Temple Emanuel in Kensington Md. This is his acceptance speech where he reflects on his lifelong commitment to the Movement.
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My Most Memorable Anti-War Protest

On the weekend of Nixon's 1969 inaugural ceremonies, anti-war protestors gathered to make their feelings clear. Craig Simpson was among those present.
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Paranoia strikes deep....

by SDSGuy Remember when we all used to wonder who the agent was? The spy in our midst? The infiltrator who was spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt? The provocateur who was spinning wild schemes of gratuitous violence and plotting revolutionary crime sprees?
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Parren Mitchell

Former Congressional Representive Parren Mitchell was originally denied entrance to UM's graduate school because of the school's Jim Crow admissions policy. With the help of the NAACP, he successfully sued and graduated with his MA in 1952. He visited the campus in the early 1970's to investigate the racial discrimination that still persisted and told assembled students, faculty and staff about his own struggles against UM's plantation mentality.

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