Volume 176, Page 50 View pdf image (33K) |
50 MARYLAND MANUAL whelmingly rejected by the voters at the election held on May 14, 1968, the vote being 367,101 against and 284,033 for ratification. Although the document was defeated in its entirety, some of the provisions of the proposed constitution have since been enacted by the Legislature. One was the reorganization of the executive branch of government, which consolidated numerous departments, commissions, bureaus and other State agencies into twelve new major departments, each headed by a cabinet-level Secretary. Another proposal adopted was the establishment of the district court system, replacing the melange of magistrates' courts, people's courts, and other courts of limited jurisdiction that had previously existed. Also of note has been the extension of the regular sessions of the General Assembly from seventy to ninety days and the creation of the office of Lieutenant Governor. On the political scene, Maryland was suddenly thrust into national prominence when Governor Spiro T. Agnew was selected by the Republican Party in August 1968 to be the running mate of presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon and subsequently elected. Governor Agnew resigned his office on January 7, 1969 and promptly thereafter the Gen- eral Assembly elected Marvin Mandel, the Speaker of the House of Delegates, to succeed him. At the election of November 3, 1970, Governor Mandel was continued in office by the voters. At the same time, Blair Lee III was elected to the newly-created office of Lieutenant Governor. He thus became the first person to have this title since Christopher C. Cox served as an un- popular Lieutenant Governor while the short-lived Consti- tution of 1864 was in effect. Blacks in Maryland On April 4, 1972, the Maryland House of Delegates adopted a Resolution No. 156, "urging that the next MARY- LAND MANUAL include in its historical sketch of the State appropriate references to the broad range of Marylanders who have contributed to the history and development of the State," and specifically noted the lack of reference to the history of Blacks in the history of Maryland. In accord with the spirit of Resolution No. 156, the Commission on Negro History and Culture was asked to prepare a summary of the Black contribution to Maryland history of which the follow- ing is an excerpt: Maryland is the birthplace or the adopted home of a dis- tinguished group of nationally recognized Black citizens in- cluding the eighteenth century astronomer Benjamin Ban- |
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Volume 176, Page 50 View pdf image (33K) |
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