Events This Week: March 9 -14

This week, celebrate Women’s History Month by learning more about a distinctive woman of courage, get ready for St. Patrick’s Day with the fighting Irish, or take some time to Lunch and Learn.

Enjoy these events from our partners!

Click on the event title for more information.

Coffee with Ken: Folklife

• Date: Tuesday, March 9
• Time: 9:00 am
• Location: Online
• Host Organization: Maryland State Arts Council

Join MSAC’s Executive Director, Ken Skrzesz and your fellow colleagues across the state on Tuesday mornings with your favorite coffee drink (or tea, if you’re like Ken!) for a topic-specific dialogue about the arts in Maryland. On March 9, Coffee with Ken welcomes the Maryland Traditions team: Chad Buterbaugh, State Folklorist, and Ryan Koons, Folklife Specialist, for relevant updates and conversation. This event is free to attend.

The Fighting Irish: Ireland and the American Revolution

• Date: Tuesday, March 9
• Time: 7:00 pm
• Location: Online
• Host Organization: Historic Annapolis

With St. Patrick’s Day upcoming, Dr. Richard Bell shares the contributions of the Irish in the American Revolution. Giving testimony to the British Parliament in 1779, Joseph Galloway estimated that Irishmen composed perhaps one-half of the Continental Army. Five years later, after Washington’s army won the war, another expert witness told Parliament that “the Irish language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as English” and that Irish valor “determined the contest.” While exaggerated, those claims contained an essential truth: that men of Irish heritage played crucial roles in fighting the American Revolution. Irish-Americans sided with the patriots against the British Army in overwhelming numbers and shouldered muskets at every significant military encounter over the eight long years of war. Join University of Maryland historian Dr. Richard Bell as he explores the Revolution from the perspective of both the Irish and their Irish-American cousins.

Registration is required. Cost to attend is $15 per household for General Admission or $10 per household for HA Members and Volunteers.

Black Women of Courage

• Date: Wednesday, March 10
• Time: 6:30 pm
• Location: Online
• Host Organization: Banneker-Douglass Museum 

In the spirit of Women’s History Month, join the Banneker-Douglass Museum for “Honoring Black Women of Courage.” Explore the life of Maryland-born, freedom fighter, Gloria Richardson who led the Cambridge Movement, a civil-rights movement which led to the desegregation of all schools, recreational areas, and hospitals in Maryland.

Moderated by Dion Banks and Kisha Petticolas of the Eastern Shore Change Network and made possible by a partnership with the University of Maryland Black Alumni Association.

Featuring Chris Haley, Director, Study of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland. Laws reflect a civilization at a certain time. They address the activities of a community, either to modify, standardize or cease a practice. Slavery was an institution that reflected its time, and its legacy continues to impact our present and color our future. Please join the Maryland State Archives’ Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program Director Chris Haley who will explore this topic through national and local figures, primary and secondary source records, images and quotes to reveal a timeline of events which both created and supported the “peculiar institution” and racism in our early history up to the advent of the American Civil War.