projects words art
Maryland Agricultural & Mechanical University
Counter pedagogies in the built environmentDisclaimer:
Engaging in the sensitive history of HBCUs
While we acknowledge that not all HBCUs are
rooted in the structural racism and designed
to civilize and pacify African Americans we
use this project as a means to shine light on
the subjugation and divestment that these
institutions received from their higher powers and
the resulting subsequent oppression that their
students experienced.
In this light, our research hinges on the nuances of
HBCUs operating both as a celebration of African
American heritage and used to systematically
prolong segregation in American education.
Countering Disinvestment
The project criticizes and reframes the history of agricultural innovation in the state of Maryland. The work visualizes the extraction of labor under the condition of enslavement on Riversdale Plantation in the 19th century, and resists the narrative of erasure of African American contributions to American farming using a new Afrofuturist framework–envisioning a university that subverts the existing Maryland state education system’s history of divestment and exclusion of African American students.
This truth began when Riversdale Plantation owner Charles B. Calvert founded the Maryland Agricultural College (later to become the University of Maryland) just after the Civil War and prohibited African Americans from enrolling.
This truth began when Riversdale Plantation owner Charles B. Calvert founded the Maryland Agricultural College (later to become the University of Maryland) just after the Civil War and prohibited African Americans from enrolling.
Originally founded as the Plumber Agricultural Institute, Maryland A&M was founded on the historical grounds of Adam Plummer’s family home, which he called Mount Rose Homestead. Being Black and literate in the Antebellum South at the time was illegal, but Adam kept a diary—the only archived writing from any African American who was enslaved on Riversdale plantation. His daughter, Nellie Plummer, later revised and continued writing in his diary long after his death in 1905. Because Adam Plummer pursued and purchased land in nearby Hyatsville, his homested would become a historic beginning of a long family legacy.
The evolution of the Riversdale plantation made it clear for the university founders to preserve the homestead after Plummer’s death by integrating it into a campus designed for experiential learning. We want to introduce you to the history of the land on which our university was established first through the eyes of Frederick Law Olmsted, then through the lens of our students, our ecologies, and our vision.
1852: Through Olmsted’s Eyes
Here’s what we know: Olmsted traveled from Washington, D.C. to Riversdale Plantation in 1852. He spent the following two years traveling to plantations in the South. Riversdale was his first stop.
In Olmsted’s text Cotton Kingdom, he writes of DC unfavorably, strangely quoting himself in dialect with an enslaved man who tends his fire in a hotel. He travels north on horseback to Riversdale Plantation just across the Maryland border, encountering the owner Charles Calvert in his freshly constructed octagonal barn. He then receives a tour of the entire plantation, consisting of 2,000 acres of crop fields (mostly wheat and tobacco), cattle fields, the Anacostia River to the East, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bisecting the site to the West.
The specific agricultural conditions of Riversdale Plantation include a large riparian corridor along the Anacostia River, where issues of soil erosion and nutrient leaching became common over years of crop overturn and tilling soils. When Guano reached the United States in the mid-18th century, it was assumed that planters like Calvert purchased the nutrient-rich bat dung from Peru to help maintain soils. This indigenous agricultural innovation was discovered by white colonialists and commodified to be sold to American Farmers through ports in New York City. Infusing Maryland’s soils with guano inevitably led to nutrient leaching on the plantation.
Over time, all 2,000 acres of Riversdale Plantation have become the town of Riverdale, Maryland and the campus for University of Maryland College Park. The Calvert’s mansion still stands as a museum, but Mount Rose Homestead instead was reallocated for public infrastructure.
Olmsted traveled from Washington, D.C. to Riversdale Plantation, embarking on two years of researching agricultural practices in the Antebellum South. He attempted to convince Calvert, the plantation owner, how inefficient slavery had become for capital growth on plantations, leaving the moral issue of slavery unaddressed at Riversdale.
In Olmsted’s text Cotton Kingdom, he writes of DC unfavorably, strangely quoting himself in dialect with an enslaved man who tends his fire in a hotel. He travels north on horseback to Riversdale Plantation just across the Maryland border, encountering the owner Charles Calvert in his freshly constructed octagonal barn. He then receives a tour of the entire plantation, consisting of 2,000 acres of crop fields (mostly wheat and tobacco), cattle fields, the Anacostia River to the East, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bisecting the site to the West.
The specific agricultural conditions of Riversdale Plantation include a large riparian corridor along the Anacostia River, where issues of soil erosion and nutrient leaching became common over years of crop overturn and tilling soils. When Guano reached the United States in the mid-18th century, it was assumed that planters like Calvert purchased the nutrient-rich bat dung from Peru to help maintain soils. This indigenous agricultural innovation was discovered by white colonialists and commodified to be sold to American Farmers through ports in New York City. Infusing Maryland’s soils with guano inevitably led to nutrient leaching on the plantation.
Over time, all 2,000 acres of Riversdale Plantation have become the town of Riverdale, Maryland and the campus for University of Maryland College Park. The Calvert’s mansion still stands as a museum, but Mount Rose Homestead instead was reallocated for public infrastructure.
Olmsted traveled from Washington, D.C. to Riversdale Plantation, embarking on two years of researching agricultural practices in the Antebellum South. He attempted to convince Calvert, the plantation owner, how inefficient slavery had become for capital growth on plantations, leaving the moral issue of slavery unaddressed at Riversdale.
Our goals for the university are to drive home the relationships between students, professors, elders, and the land itself.
Using experiential learning practices and oral traditions, the curriculum explores past and future agricultural innovations that have evolved from generations of knowledge existing on the peripheries of exclusionary institutions like the University of Maryland, but thriving in cultures like the HBCU of University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Sciences.
Using fugitive practices of learning through methods of praxis focusing on learning from being in the environment, a practice taken from the pedagogy of the militant mangrove schools, students engage with the history of crops and cultural heritage from Griot’s(instructors or professors) through hands on training and experimentation.
Using experiential learning practices and oral traditions, the curriculum explores past and future agricultural innovations that have evolved from generations of knowledge existing on the peripheries of exclusionary institutions like the University of Maryland, but thriving in cultures like the HBCU of University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Sciences.
Using fugitive practices of learning through methods of praxis focusing on learning from being in the environment, a practice taken from the pedagogy of the militant mangrove schools, students engage with the history of crops and cultural heritage from Griot’s(instructors or professors) through hands on training and experimentation.
Admissions Letter, Campus Tour Poster, and Sample Course Syllabi
top