May 17th marks the anniversary of when nine Catholic activists burned 378 draft files in the parking lot of the Catonsville draft board to protest the Vietnam War. Little did they know the ripple effects of their actions.  May 6th on MHC’s radio segment, Humanities Connection, Dr. Theodore Gonzalves, Department Chair of UMBC’s American Studies Department, provided a reflection about the power of symbolism, and how we think about social protest, civic duty, and citizenship for our time. A MHC grant provided support for film screenings, panel discussions, and other public dialogue opportunities in conjunction with UMBC project, titled “Looking Forward from the 45th Anniversary of the Catonsville Nine Actions.”

Blood and fire are two of the most powerful symbols in all of human history. They’ve found their way into just about every aspect of popular culture – from films about vampires to songs with images of eternal flames or sparkling embers. Those symbols actually have long histories in just about every cultural tradition. And that makes sense, especially because blood and fire capture experiences that everyone has tried to comprehend. Blood has come to symbolize life itself, flowing through all of human and animal worlds. Fire has been attached to everything from nature’s sometimes inevitable destruction to man-made carelessness. It should come as no surprise that those very same symbols played a key role in Baltimore’s history of social protest and activism.

The Catonsville Nine

In October of 1967, a group of four men, later known as “The Baltimore Four,” who were inspired by their Christian faith, performed a unique act of protest against the Vietnam War era draft. They poured blood over draft files in order to, as they claimed, anoint them. One of the main figures behind the act was Philip Berrigan, a Catholic priest, who said: “This sacrificial and constructive act is meant to protest the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood in Indochina.” The men were subsequently arrested.

In the following year, while awaiting trial, two of the members of the original Baltimore Four decided it was necessary to escalate the tactic. For the members of the group, repeating the pouring of blood wasn’t enough. What was needed was another kind of symbol that could capture people’s attention. The group expanded and the tactic changed from blood to fire.

With an improvised recipe of home-made napalm—a key part of the U.S. arsenal used in Vietnam—the Catonsville Nine burned nearly 400 draft records dragged from a government office in Baltimore County. Like the original Baltimore Four, the Catonsville Nine didn’t run from the police. Instead, they torched the documents, read a statement that called out the effects of U.S. violence in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and recited the Lord’s Prayer. They were tried in federal court in October 1968.

• Listen to Dr. Gonzalves’ essay in a podcast on WYPR 88.1fm.

The subsequent trial of the Nine was met with thousands pouring into Baltimore to support or denounce the group. Celebrated radical lawyer William Kuntsler led the defense team. The Nine were eventually convicted of destroying government property, a charge they never contested, and nearly half the group went underground to evade their jail sentence.

The actions of the Catonsville Nine inspired hundreds of other groups to oppose government policies – from Washington DC to Chicago, Harrisburg, Camden, and many more. A new tone had been set. Unchecked, a fire can grow out of control. Certainly, that was part of the power of that symbol. The Nine asked us to consider making an active comparison between the burning of paper and the burning of so many human lives.

You can catch MHC’s Humanities Connection each Monday at 5:45pm on WYPR (or WYPO in Ocean City), your NPR News station. Click here to learn about upcoming episodes. Click here to discover listen to podcasts of previous episodes.

Watching my older son fail at the Maryland History Day competition on Saturday was one of the toughest things I’ve done as a parent.  He had paced through the hours between his presentation to the judges and announcement of the awards.  At the awards ceremony, his face was pale.  He clenched and unclenched his hands and jaw, and stared intently at the emcees while other awards were announced. When his name wasn’t called for either the first or second place in his category, his posture sagged and I could see that he was working hard to keep his emotions under control.  When we left the Retriever Athletic Center at UMBC, he stormed off ahead of me.  An hour later, I had never been prouder of him, even though he had failed to accomplish an important goal.

My son blundered into the National History Day competition by accident in sixth grade.  All we knew was that it was a compulsory school project that would be a big part of his grade.  He was dragging his feet on picking a topic the afternoon before it was due.

“What do you want to do the project on?” I asked him in exasperation.
He picked up a rubber chicken toy.  “Something with chickens,” he said.
“Fine,” I said.  “Let’s go to the Internet and look up chicken history.  Let’s have some fun with this.”

He found a book on the development of large-scale chicken farming on the Delmarva Peninsula.  He visited an agricultural museum in Delaware and a poultry farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  He designed an exhibit board shaped like a chicken, and used some basic model railroad construction techniques to build a diorama.  I was surprised when he received an award for the project at his school.  Astounded when the project won cash prizes at the county and state competitions.  Charmed when I watched him run around the University of Maryland campus to trade state buttons with competitors from all over the United States and beyond.  Thrilled when I saw the impact of success in the History Day competition on his self-esteem.  He was thinking of himself as a success.  A winner.

Through two more years of History Day projects, both of which advanced to the national level of competition, I watched him grow academically and personally.  He chose more complex topics each year.  He tackled college-level source material, and his research and writing skills improved.  His analysis of challenging data became better.  He gained confidence by interviewing people for the projects.  He learned to use a hot-glue gun.  He began to meet interim deadlines with less urging (okay, less screaming) on my part.  Even his math grades came up, because succeeding at History Day convinced him that he was a good student and could master challenging material.  In eighth grade, even though he wants a career in science or medicine, he chose the History Day competition over the Science Fair when the deadlines were too close together for him to participate in both.  He finally won an award at nationals that year – “Best Entry from the State of Maryland.”

Freshman year is the last in which participation in History Day is mandatory for some students at my son’s high school.  I was glad that he would complete one final project.  Competing and succeeding in History Day had become a part of his identity as a student; success in the competition would help keep his self-esteem up during the transition to high school; and the extra work would help to prepare him for the greater workload in future AP classes.

“This is my last year,” he insisted.  “I’ll have too much homework next year.”

I thought he might be right:  he had put in more than a hundred hours on each of his first three History Day projects.  Like most fourteen-year-old boys, my son disdained parental input and advice.  I watched him forget or ignore most of what he had learned in the first three years of competition.  He created a very good project – but it was not up to the standard of the previous three.  I told myself over and over: This is his project.  He’s growing up; I won’t be around to offer advice and suggestions forever.  Sooner or later, he has to succeed or to fail on his own.  And on April 27th, at the 2013 Maryland History Day, his project did not advance to the national level of the competition.

“What did I do wrong?” he asked me on the way home.
“What do you think you did wrong?” I asked.

View History Day photos:
Facebook.com/
marylandhistoryday

For the next half-hour, he evaluated his own work.  He spent too much time on Xbox and TV, he said.  He used low-hanging fruit for source material, and was satisfied with it.  He had lacked the confidence to request an interview with someone who won a Nobel Prize.  He could have done a dynamic diorama instead of a static display.  He could have taken the advice of his seventh-grade social studies teacher, and made the project interactive.  He knew that standards in the senior division would be higher, and that he would be competing against upperclassmen, but he hadn’t made enough extra effort.

“I treated it like a junior division project,” he said.  “And I thought that because I went to nationals for three years in a row, I would automatically go again this year.  I was overconfident.”
“This probably isn’t the right day for me to tell you that sometimes you learn more from failing than you do from winning,” I said a few minutes later.
“No!” he replied.  “Absolutely this is not the right day for that!”

So instead, I told him about working at the U. S. Embassy in Moscow for an army colonel who had been selected for the rank of brigadier general, but whose promotion had been delayed for political reasons.

“What’s going to happen if your promotion never comes?” someone asked soon after his arrival.
“Sooner or later,” the colonel said, “the wheels fall off the wagon for everyone.  You have to have something to go to when that happens.  It doesn’t matter if I retire as a colonel, or as a general.  I have a life beyond the Army, and when I’m no longer serving I’m going to live that life.”

“It sounds like the wheels fell off your History Day wagon today,” I said.  “What are you going to do next?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.

“The way I see it,” I told him, “you have two choices.  You can put all this behind you and focus on your homework next year.  Or you can choose to put the wheels back on the wagon and head up the hill again.  You can do a project next year, even though it’s not mandatory.  You can learn from your mistakes, put in the work you’re capable of doing, and take another shot at the national competition.  But you don’t have to.  You’re growing up, and you can make more choices for yourself.  This is one of them.”

He was very quiet for a few minutes.
“What’s the theme for next year?” he asked.  He started to brainstorm some ideas for a project, a title, a diorama. He sat up straighter, and his eyes started to sparkle.
“I’m glad my project didn’t advance to nationals this year,” he said.
“You are?  Why?”
“Well, if I’d gone to nationals, this would probably have been the last year I participated in History Day.  But since I didn’t make it to nationals, I’m going to do it again. I’m not going to make the same mistakes next time.  I’m going to do a better job.  And I’m glad I’m going to do it again.”

My son may or may not do a History Day project next year, but as of today, the competition is part of his game plan for 2014.I would have been proud of him if his History Day project had advanced to the national competition this year.  But I’m more proud of what he accomplished when he failed to go.

The History Day competition doesn’t just teach social studies content, analytical skills, and presentation.  It’s more than an opportunity for a student to succeed. It can teach life skills, like how to handle failure – and how to recover.

Sincerely,
      Jerri Bell, History Day Parent

Do you have a similar story to share?  Please leave a response below or on MHC’s Facebook Fan Page.  Our thanks to our History Day parent and her son for sharing their very personal reflections after the 2013 Maryland History Day competition. The 2013 History Day State Contest results will be posted here tomorrow. To learn how you can support MHC programs for students, click here. Want to discover more?  Read the September 2011 NY Times Magazine Education Article “What if the Secret to Success is Failure” by Paul Tough.

MHC launched a new radio segment in March 2013 on WYPR 88.1, FM called “Humanities Connection,” airing every Monday at 5:45pm.  While the station reaches the Baltimore, Hagerstown, Frederick, and Ocean City areas, from time to time we’ll share the written essays submitted for the show by MHC scholars, some of which are truncated for time constraints.  Please enjoy this essay by labor scholar Bill Barry, which aired April 15th.

The Words of Steelworkers by Bill Barry
When friends were passing through Baltimore over the Key Bridge, I would always tell them to look to the east to see America. There on the peninsula where the Patapsco River meets the Chesapeake Bay, they could see the Sparrows Point steel mill, which once employed more than 31,000 workers, where there was a town of more than 10,000 residents, and which supported an extended community of millions. They could see the fire and smell the smoke and hear the noise that was so great that one World War II veteran quit working there because he said the noise sounded just like combat.

Now when I tell people to look off the bridge to see America, they see almost 500 acres of empty mills, with the last 2,000 workers cast off at the end of 2012. The abandoned sheds, the huge furnaces and railroad cars now being sold as scrap are the end of a wonderful and complex civilization that lasted for 124 years since the first steel was poured at The Point in 1889.

While there had been tough economic times at The Point for 30 years, and regular rumors about the closing of the mill, no one really thought it would happen—this was the company, after all, that made the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building and the Bonneville Dam. The last ten years, however, were brutal—after 86 years of ownership by Bethlehem Steel, the Sparrows Point mill was bought and sold four times in 10 years before closing in late 2012.

• Visit Bill Barry’s site www.SparrowsPointSteelworkers.com

Naval guns being assembled at Bethlehem Steel. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

As an instructor at The Community College of Baltimore County in Dundalk, I taught classes to the workers at The Point for 15 years and in class, they would tell stories about their work, about their families and communities and their union, about their struggles to build this union, to deal with a workplace that was strictly segregated and which was not at all welcoming to women.

Captivated by the stories that the workers and retirees told, I began to videotape interviews with them in 2002 and with some help from The Maryland Humanities Council, created a web site to display memories of the lives of the workers and their families. I wanted to capture these histories to help the next generation to understand how this country was built. I also began to collect “stuff”—tools, photographs, and work clothes, for example–the physical accumulation of memories that workers saved.

Most importantly, I wanted to emphasize the importance of their lives because so many of them began their interviews by stating “I’m not important, I just worked at the mill’’- for 40, or in some cases, 50 years.  These are voices of history and should be heard. Sparrows Point workers are special—they have, from the largest man to the smallest woman, a certain swagger that reflects working in the toughest place in town and their memories are marvelous.

The question now is why did Sparrows Point, like so many manufacturing companies in the U-S, close. Was it the greedy union members? Was it inept management who paid extravagant executive salaries instead of reinvesting in new technology? Was it the civil rights movement that established equal access to promotion for blacks and women? Was it bad trade policies, like The North American Free Trade agreement? Was it just a country that would rather know things than make things? Everyone has an opinion and the discussions are passionate. My interviews of the Sparrows Point workers reflect this wide range.

Finally, how can we prevent this kind of closing from happening over and over again, displacing millions of American workers? When Mittal Steel—which owned Sparrows Point from 2005-2008–proposed in November, 2012, closing two blast furnaces and laying off more than 600 workers in France, the president of France threatened to nationalize the mill and the company immediately agreed to invest in the mill and to retain the workers. After the closing of Sparrows Point was announced, the wailing by the politicians, at local, state and federal levels, was deafening but not one proposed a way to keep the plant open.

The history of Sparrows Point teaches an exciting, if cautionary, lesson about the delicate relationship between industry and community, culture and identity.

Professor Bill Barry, now retired,  is currently working on a book about the 1877 B&O Railroad strike. Listen to a podcast of a Humanities Connection segment at www.wypr.org.

On Saturday, April 13, over 100 students received honors during the Letters About Literature Awards Ceremony, held at the Enoch Pratt Library Central Branch Wheeler Auditorium, during the CityLit Festival.  The Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year Award was given to Clinton Smith, 10th grade teacher at Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County.  He has graciously agreed to allow the Maryland Humanities Council the opportunity to reprint his acceptance speech to our blog.  

Christine D. Sarbanes  Teacher Award Recipient Clinton Smith’s
Remarks at MHC’s “Letters About Literature” Contest Awards Ceremony

I first want to thank the Maryland Humanities Council and the Sarbanes Family for this incredible honor and for working relentlessly to push this importance of reading and writing in our schools.

I want to thank my parents, for being the embodiment of patience, for allowing me to travel so many paths, simply so that I could find the right one.

I want to thank my colleagues, from whom I’ve learned so much and who deserve this award just as much as anyone.

I want to thank my principal Ms. Logan, whose mentorship and guidance has been unwavering, giving me the skills and confidence to be at my professional best everyday.

And of course I want to thank my students, for their curiosity, their brilliance, and there unrelenting will to be so much more than this world expects of them.

My entire life I have loved literature. In my third grade yearbook, one question asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In prototypical eight-year-old fashion, most of my peers stated, “ballerina,” basketball star,” “astronaut,” “fireman.” My answer, reflective of the awkward, big-headed, dream-filled kid that I was, read, “I want to be a Newberry Award winning author!”

And while it is something that selective memory could fool me into looking back on with a playful sense of childhood nostalgia, it would be a mischaracterization to do so. Putting those feelings out into the world of my schoolyard, was not a joyous experience, it was humiliating. My peers did not praise my answer to that question, but admonished it. My dreams were not admired, but chastised. As a black boy at a public school in New Orleans, LA becoming a writer did not fit into the box of options that this world had imposed on me, and that too many in my community had subsequently internalized.

• Check out Clinton Smith’s spoken-word poetry site:  http://cwardsmith.tumblr.com/

There was seemingly no room in this world for an eight year old black boy to dream of being an author. It wasn’t a rapper, a basketball player, or an entertainer. It wasn’t in prison and it wasn’t on drugs. There was no room for a boy whose great grandfather, was prohibited from reading by law for fear that any enhancement to his intellect, would make him more dangerous to his owners. Being black with a book, was dangerous. For so much of my life, I felt that being black with a book put me in danger.

I share this with my students. That so many of them are descendants of a history in which being able to read and write would have literally had them hung. Or that others, come from families in which the English language is a buried treasure their family’s tongues have never been able to dig up. The opportunity to learn to read and write, is not an option, I tell them. It is a responsibility. To not do so would be an injustice to everyone who came before you. So many of whom literally died so that you could sit in this classroom and open a book. Whether is Maria, whose mother slept for nights in the belly of trucks amid concrete and fertilizers so as not to be smelled by the dogs. I think of David whose father comes from South Africa where up until less than two decades ago, the Bantu Education Act ensured that in school he would have been taught nothing, but how to be the servant of a white family. I think of my own grandfather, who fought for this country in a war it should have never been a part of, only to come home to a place that spit on his face as soon as he put down his gun.

• Click here to read the Letters About Literature 2013 winning letters.

We sit in our classroom as ambassadors of our past. We will learn to read critically, write consciously, and speak clearly because that is the only way this world will ever listen to what we have to say.

I tell my students that we are not here to celebrate the status quo of stereotypes. Whether it is what you look like, what you sound like, what your name is, or where your family is from, our role is to break out of these boxes the world has put us in. Everyday in my class we try to use literature to break out of these boxes. We question. We criticize. We agitate. We advocate. We read. We write. We recognize that we all have a story.

My dream is that my students continue to write their story, long after they have left my classroom. They are the award-winning authors we’ve been waiting for, and I know that a 3rd grade Clint would be extremely proud to be writing this story right along with them.

About Clinton Smith:  A New Orleans native and graduate of Davidson College, Mr. Smith has been a tour de force since joining the staff, obtaining over 1,200 books for students through book drives, grants and personal donations. Last year Mr. Smith’s students improved their reading levels by more than two years. So far, this year’s students have also seen a similar increase. As a professional spoken word poet who has competed internationally, he is a walking manifestation of how learning to read and write well serves a purpose beyond the classroom.  Click here to read his full  bio.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum received grant support from MHC in 2012 for a series of Community Conversations. Inspired by MHC’s Let’s Be Shore project, “State of the Oyster“ dialogues focus on  water quality and its affect Oyster industry on the Eastern Shore. In this post, Robert Forloney, Director of the Center of Chesapeake Studies at the Chesapeake Maritime Museum, tells us about the series.  We encourage you to visit the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels and attend a free community conversation.

As the Director of the Center for Chesapeake Studies (CCS) at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) I have been involved with the Maryland Humanities Council’s (MHC) Practicing Democracy initiative’s Let’s Be Shore project initiative in a variety of ways over the past year.

Among other roles, I have had the pleasure to serve as a local community leader to assist with the planning  of public dialogues  and participated in a forum at the Talbot County Free Library as part of the Chesapeake Film Festival.   We also partnered with Let’s Be Shore as part of our annual Chesapeake Folk Festival by providing a site for the Let’s Be Shore sharing station as well as hosting a panel discussion with a diverse audience.  These MHC programs tie in very closely to the work that the Center for Chesapeake Studies is now undertaking with regard to public discussion and outreach to new audiences.

State of the Oyster, the first series in CCS’s new initiative titled Community Conversations, will focus on the status of the oyster fishery and its past, present, and future significance to different Bay communities.  Scheduled for four Sunday afternoons in late winter 2013, these programs will pose the question of whether and how oyster production can continue as a backbone of the region’s culture and economy. While biological dimensions of the “oyster question” will be addressed, the primary focus will be on the cultural and social dynamics of this issue. One of the most significant goals of the project is to host public forums where stakeholders holding different, and in some cases conflicting, perspectives can have meaningful conversations.  The hope is to use the formal presentations as a catalyst for open and civil dialogue about topics important to the community as a whole.   A “Civic Engagement” grant from The Maryland Humanities Council provided funding for this innovative project which will also include an art exhibition, original video production and new research as part of the overall program.

Each session will examine a particular aspect of this complicated topic: the social history of Chesapeake oyster production and conservation; the causes of the oyster crash; the traditions, expertise, and perspectives of watermen; and the possibilities and consequences for addressing the imperiled state of oystering. Programs will include presentations by historians and scientists as well as oyster harvesters and processors followed by , questions and comments from the audience and mediated group discussions between the presenters and the public. Throughout the duration of this project, photographs and paintings depicting the daily activities of watermen will be on display and will provide a stimulus for reflection and conversation.  Video clips of watermen engaged in activities such as tonging, the inner workings of processing plants, and scientists engaged in actual field work will be shown at the beginning of each program in order to provide context for the topics discussed.
In order to address the various problems caused by the decline in the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population in depth, we have divided this program into four, separate sessions:

Sunday, February 24th, 2pm-4pm
We will focus on the social history of oyster production and conservation during “Oysters and People” in order to address the long-term interactions between oysters and the region’s human inhabitants. This panel will include a historian, a folklorist, and an oyster biologist.

Sunday, March 3rd , 4pm-6pm
“How Did We Get Here?” will debate the various factors that have contributed to the decline of the Chesapeake oyster populations and will include showing excerpts from the SeaGrant film, “Who Killed Crassostrea Virginica,” as well as presentations by researchers and watermen.

Sunday, March 10th, 2pm-4pm
This panel consists of watermen and women who will present their experience-based perspectives on the history and future of Chesapeake oystering. During “Watermen: Traditions and Perspectives,”  participants will hear directly from these men and women what it is like to make a living under today’s difficult circumstances, the changes that have seen in their lifetimes, and their ideas about the future of the industry.

Sunday, March 17th, 2pm-4pm
This session is called “State of the Oyster: Possibilities and Consequences.”  A panel of watermen, oyster researchers, and oyster farmers will discuss the future. This includes aquaculture, reclaiming shell and moving seed, disease research and mitigation, and sanctuaries. The focus of this final session will be on how the cultural worlds within which watermen are enmeshed can be part of each of these proposed solutions.
While we recognize that no one program can settle these questions once and for all, our goal is to use a humanities-based, dialogue-centered approach to encourage respectful engagement, facilitate listening, and generate better public understanding.  The idea is to engage with others who think, feel, and believe differently.  Please join us as we look beneath the surface of these complex issues.

    Watch the Let’s Be Shore video portrait of Johnny Schockley, Oyster Aquaculture

State of the Oyster programs are open to all free of charge.  The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is located at 213 Talbot Street in St. Michaels. For more information please visit:  www.cbmm.org

Robert Forloney is currently the Director of the Center of Chesapeake Studies at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in Saint Michaels.  He has worked in the field a variety of ways over the past fifteen years as a teacher for the New York City Museum School as well as an educator, administrator and consultant at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the Morgan Library, American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art and the South Street Seaport Museum.  Whether working at an art institution or a history museum, Robert attempts to make objects and images accessible to audiences through facilitating conversations as well as utilizing experiential learning techniques.

http://www.cbmm.org/stateoftheoyster/index.htm

FOR ALL THE WORLD TO HEAR: STORIES FROM THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
An Oral History, Performance and Digital Humanities Outreach Project of the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, UMBC by Harriet Lynn

In the 1950’s an African-American college student, Woodrow “Woody” B. Grant, Jr. sat in his Virginia Union University classroom mesmerized by the guest speaker, a magnetic young minister. The speaker spoke directly to the hearts and souls of the college students—on how passive resistance could be used to change their plight.  This speaker’s presence and compelling message had an immediate and profound impact on Woody. The young minister who spoke to Woody and his classmates that day was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The experience changed Woody’s life.

Woody Grant immediately became a “foot soldier” for freedom and has since dedicated his life to fighting for civil rights. Woody with his long time Aberdeen, Maryland-born wife, Janice Grant, a strong force in her own right as a civil rights activist and leader, continue to champion freedom and justice for all. The Grants are only two of the ten individuals who met once a week since September 2012 in Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park neighborhood to share stories of their experience as part of a special community-based oral history performance project, For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights.

Some participants became involved by responding to advertisements featured in publications such as The Beacon Newspaper or were recommended through word-of-mouth. Many young people—and even adults today—who came into being soon after the heights of the civil rights movement are unaware of the personal sacrifices, risks, and humiliations endured.  For All the World to Hear’s goal is to share some of the stories by the very persons who lived them with today’s audiences.

Unfortunately, not all of the stories are able to be told in the one-hour performance piece, but will be available as digital stories and featured on iTunesU.  UMBC students are also recording the experience, from “process to performance” in a documentary film.

• For more information about For All the World to Hear including performances, documentary film, and digital storytelling, visit the CADVC project website foralltheworldtohear.org.

Fortunately, with the aid of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), and generous support from the Maryland Humanities Council (MHC), For All the World To Hear has come to fruition. The program has benefited from the aid of six UMBC students, who documented and supported the project plus ongoing support of producer and project director, Sandra Abbott, CADVC curator of collections and outreach. It was Ms. Abbott who originally envisioned an outreach companion piece for the powerful For All the World to See exhibit, now featured at UMBC, in CADVC’s gallery through March 10, 2013. The exhibit demonstrates how the media affected the civil rights movement. The adage by Marshall McLuhan, “the media is the message” is very much alive in this must see exhibit.

Do young people today know what it was like to not be able to eat at any restaurant or stay at any hotel of their choosing? Could they swim or play tennis in a public park or drink from any water fountain? If it were not for these individuals and the thousands who dared to put themselves on the line we would not be as far along as we are today?  I must ask, “Are we there yet”?

For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights from UMBC’S CADVC on Vimeo.

For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights is a community outreach program of the Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture (CADVC) at UMBC, organized by Sandra Abbott, CADVC’s curator of collections and outreach.

Program partners include the St. Francis Neighborhood Center, Stoop Storytelling Series, Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory & Botanic Gardens, Druid Hill Park, and the Senior Division of the Baltimore City Recreation & Parks Department. Media partners include Beacon Press and WYPR. For all the World to Hear is inspired by the concurrent CADVC project, For All The World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, curated by Dr. Maurice Berger, CADVC’s Research Professor and Chief Curator. Learn more at foralltheworldtosee.org.

This project was made possible by a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council, through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Maryland Humanities Council. The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is a non-profit organization dedicated to organizing comprehensive exhibitions, the publication of catalogs, CDs, DVDs, and books on the arts, and educational and community outreach projects.

Harriet Lynn

Harriet Lynn, BFA, MS, (oral historian, performance director/dramaturge for For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights) is founder/producer/artistic director of Heritage Theatre Artists’ Consortium. As a museum theatre consultant she works with various museums and educational organizations providing museum theatre, living history and oral history programming since 1994. She is a member of AAM, IMTAL, OHMAR and SAG-AFTRA.

In 2012, nearly 7,000 Marylanders, hailing from every county in our state, took part in the Maryland’s only statewide book club, One Maryland One Book (OMOB).  Partners—from libraries to universities to community centers—hosted book discussions, events, concerts, and other programs highlighting our 2012 selection by Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo.  MHC was proud to bring Mr. Galloway to Maryland to speak with audiences across the state about his novel.

Recently MHC put a call out to the public to send to us suggestions for our 2013 pick.  Selections were accepted under the theme “a pivotal and impactful moment in time.”  There are other criteria for selections.  You can find our full criteria here or access our OMOB FAQ page for more information.

• Click here to discover One Maryland One Book selections over the last five years.

More than 140 suggestions were submitted to MHC, via the One Maryland One Book Facebook page, MHC on Twitter, and via email.  This list has been whittled down to 11 titles.  In the coming weeks the One Maryland One Book selection committee will meet to complete the selection process, but we thought we’d share the current list with you.

Have you read any of these books?  What qualities in a book make for great reading and discussion? Tell us what you think!  Comment below or share your thoughts on One Maryland One Book Facebook page.

2013 Top 11:

AUTHOR                                                                              TITLE

Wes Moore,  The Other Wes More
Rebecca Skloot,  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Alice McDermott,  That Night
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
Hillary Jordan,  Mudbound
Yann Martel,  The Life of Pi
Jonathan Safran Foer,  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Toni Morrison,  Home
Cornelia Nixon, Jarrettsville
Peggielene Bartels and Eleanor Herman, King Peggy
Jesmyn Ward,  Salvage the Bones

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One Maryland One Book is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Maryland State Department of Education. Additional support was received in 2012 from Constellation Energy, the Verizon Foundation, and M&T Bank.  OMOB is produced in partnership with the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

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By Antoine Rushing, Towson University Student

Over the summer, I got the opportunity to read the book The Cellist of Sarajevo, and as I was reading, I could not help but think of a quote recently stated by a popular artist: “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives.” The implication of this quote is that it is possible to be alive, but not be living. It could also be said that there is a difference between living and surviving. This fact is definitely evident in The Cellist of Sarajevo.

• Click here to find One Maryland One Book discussions  and programs about The Cellist of Sarajevo near you.

Like the citizens of Sarajevo, living comes naturally when life is easy. Prior to the bombshell, people made various choices and decisions about how to spend their time, and they enjoyed themselves. They were living life. It is after the tragedy that creates the book that the citizens of Sarajevo must actively decide whether they will continue living, or choose to simply survive. Of the three main characters- Kenan, Dragan, and Arrow- only one chose to keep living. That of course, was Arrow. The interesting thing about that decision is that Arrow chose to keep living by refusing to allow her surroundings to dictate her behavior and thinking. Kenan and Dragan chose to survive by allowing themselves to believe that their fate was not in their hands, but in the hands of the men on the top of the hills. The moment that we as humans relinquish our right to make decisions, the moment when we feel that there is only one option, we have stopped living, and have begun surviving.

Antoine Rushing. Photo by Ken Stanek

I found this book to be enlightening because it encouraged me to reflect on the type of person I really am. I live in the US so it is highly unlikely that I will ever be in a situation like that in Sarajevo. This being the case I probably will never have my sense of humanity tested to the degree of the three main characters in The Cellist of Sarajevo. Despite this fact, I used the small moments in the book almost as a mirror to the type of person I am now. Kenan recognized that integral part of living is preserving the sense of community. In order to do that, he had to view life in terms of how he could contribute to the lives of others, rather than in terms of his own needs. Like Kenan, would I go out of my way to help someone if there is nothing in it for me. If I saw someone drop their books, would I help them pick them up even though I have a class to get to? I don’t know. I hope so. I will find out the next time I see someone drop something. It is in those small moments that we can choose to view life by our contributions to it rather than our needs or wants.
The book opens with the explanation of how the work we now know as “Albinoni’s Adagio” came to be. It was reconstructed from a manuscript fragment found in the aftermath of a burned library. In the novel the cellist found that fact to be awe-inspiring and it gave him hope. Throughout the novel the music, and the cellist give the people of Sarajevo hope. The cellist exemplified each day that despite the circumstances, each person must still choose his/her own fate. The music illustrated that, like Sarajevo, something that seems impossible or hopeless could be recreated or rebuilt through time an effort. That would never, will never be achieved through survival.
Antoine Rushing is an honors college student at Towson University, studying Biology. Our thanks for Antoine for allowing the Maryland Humanities Council to publish his introductory speech, given to Baltimore City School students in October during the MHC’s One Maryland One Book Author Tour, featuring Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, the 2012 pick.

by Jill Cluff, reprinted from The Cecil Whig 9.10.12

Think about what you did this morning.  Get up, hop in the shower, brush your teeth, pop something in the microwave or toaster for breakfast.  Now imagine your morning without any of those things.  You have less than a cup of cold water to wash yourself with.  You have to work in the bathroom in the dark, because the sun is coming up later now, and you have no electricity.  Say goodbye to that morning bagel or coffee – no power to run those either.  And get ready to spend all day along dangerous roads to fetch enough water to last you for the next two days.  Rinse and repeat.  (On second thought, skip the rinse – there isn’t enough water.  Just repeat.)

In our society of “what-I-want-when-I-want-it” mentality, it’s amazing how these little things can be taken for granted.  But war changes everything.  Suddenly, a small act like washing your hands and microwaving last night’s leftovers can turn into a luxury.  And yet, it is in doing these seemingly mundane tasks that you maintain sanity; they may bomb my house, but I will always have my routine to call home.   Being normal becomes the rebellion.  The Cellist of Sarajevo exploits this paradox beautifully.  “What [we] want isn’t a change, or to set things right again, but to stop things from getting worse…Perhaps the only thing that will stop it from getting worse is people doing the things they know how to do.”¹

Besieged Sarajevo becomes the backdrop for the stories of four strangers, all connected by the tragedy of what they have already seen and the ferocity of their need to survive.  In the middle of them all is the cellist.  An ordinary man with exceptional musical abilities, he mourns death by doing the only thing he knows how to do: he plays.  One day for each of the 22 people who were killed while standing in line for bread outside his building.  And in this simple act of bravery, he becomes the beating heart of a Sarajevo that once was – the memory of what will never be again.  The story of the cellist is true, though the events and people around it are fictionalized.  But somehow knowing that such a person exists is in itself, heartening.  We hear so much of movie stars and political figures that it is refreshing to finally learn of a true hero whose sacrifice and humility define him.

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Piercing in its simplicity, the novel is the perfect combination of bitter and sweet.  In very few pages, you find a piece of yourself in each of the characters, though sometimes you may have made a different choice, were you in a similar situation.  But, as each of them learns in turn, courage is costly.  Often just getting through the day is a battleground too fierce for traverse.  At the same time, an act as small as carrying extra bottles to fill with water for a neighbor becomes momentous in its hopeful defiance.  “As long as there’s war, life is a preventative measure.”²

In honor of One Maryland, One Book, he author, Steven Galloway, is coming to Cecil County to discuss his novel, Monday October 1, at 3pm at the Elkton Central Library.  Book discussions for both adults and teens will be held at each of the branches (see schedule below).  One Maryland, One Book is sponsored by the Maryland Humanities Council, and when you register for one of the book discussions, you get to keep your copy of the book, which is well worth owning.

4.75 stars out of 5
¹ Galloway, 5
² Galloway, 222

One Maryland, One Book 2012 Cecil County Discussion Dates, Times & Places:
September 17 – 6:30 pm | North East Branch
September 20 – 7pm  | Elkton Central Library
September 20 – 3:30pm (teen) |Perryville Branch
September 24 – 4pm (teen) | Cecilton Branch
September 25 – 7pm | Cecilton Branch
September 27 – 3:30pm (teen) | Elkton Central Library
September 27 – 7pm | Perryville Branch
October 10 – 7pm | Rising Sun Branch
October 18 – 1pm |Chesapeake City Branch
October 22 – 1pm | Rising Sun Branch

Jill Cluff

Jill Cluff is a sometimes librarian who is married to one giant and mom to another.  She loves all things book and foold related—often at the same time.

Thank you to Jill Cluff and The Cecil Whig for allowing MHC to reprint Mrs. Cluff’s review of Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo. It appeared in The Cecil Whig on September 10, 2012.