Three years removed from his victory as lead counsel in the landmark desegregation case Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., Thurgood Marshall was Maryland State College’s commencement speaker in the spring of 1957. While Marshall built an impressive resume fighting discrimination as a civil rights attorney for the NAACP, he cemented his…Read more Thurgood Marshall
Maryland State College alumnus C. Payne Lucas co-founded Africare, a non-government organization formed by veterans of the Peace Corps to focus on quality of life challenges faced by nations across Africa. Known to friends and associates as “Luke,” he was born Sept. 14, 1933 in New Hope, N.C, one of William and Minnie Hendricks Lucas’…Read more C. Payne Lucas
Portia E. Lovett was born Feb. 10, 1859 in Berryville, Va. and grew up on a Clarke County farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Her parents, Wilson and Martha Burns Lovett, sent her to study at Storer Normal School in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., founded to train Blacks to be teachers shortly after the Civil War ended….Read more Portia E. Lovett Bird
A Wilmington, Del. newspaper published an article the last week of August 1886 that said a local minister turned down an opportunity to return to his roots as an educator and lead a new Methodist Episcopal Church-supported prep school about to open in Princess Anne, Md. “The Rev. H.A. Monroe, pastor of Ezion M.E. Church, this…Read more Rev. Henry A. Monroe
John Alfred Banum Wilson, son of a sea captain, was born Sept. 14, 1848 in Milton, Del. Wilson attended grade school in his hometown, but many of his formative years were spent at sea with his father. Not only did he learn mariner skills, but it was where he educated himself by studying Greek and Latin. …Read more The Rev. John A.B. Wilson
Joseph Robert Smith Waters, one of 10 children of the Rev. Samuel Griffin and Henrietta Fontaine Waters, was born May 8, 1856 in Fairmount, Md. in Somerset County. Educated in local schools available at the time, Waters answered the call to ministry, a legacy that flowed like a river through his veins. Waters’ father was among…Read more The Rev. Joseph R.S. Waters
An old-school professor who shaped the civil rights movement English professor Mary Fair Burks was an imposing, willful presence on the University of Maryland Eastern Shore campus for more than a quarter century. No shrinking violet was she, the late Rosa Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as legions of students all…Read more Mary Fair Burks
Congressman John Lewis relied on no formal remarks when he delivered the commencement address May 16, 2014 at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. He didn’t need to. Lewis had a life rich and full of experiences carefully catalogued in his head that a half-century earlier took its share of beatings by police and anti-civil…Read more ‘good trouble, necessary trouble’
Students attending Princess Anne Academy in the first decade of the 20th century did not have to look far to see how education could be transformative. Principal Frank Trigg lost an arm in an accident on a farm where his parents were enslaved. Unable to do intensive manual labor, Trigg channeled his curiosity and intellect…Read more Frank Trigg
Preacher Pap and “the exciting” Maryland State Choir released a gospel album in 1978 with the whimsically quizzical title, “If God Seems Far From You … Guess Who Moved?” University of Maryland Eastern Shore alumni who collect memorabilia from — and about — their alma mater should avoid judging a vinyl record by its album cover, however. Pap, whose…Read more Preacher Pap & the Maryland State Choir
