Upcoming Events

August Lunch and Learn: The Wild Women of Maryland

Discover Maryland's legacy of daring women who made their mark on history as spies, would-be queens and fiery suffragettes. Maryland's history is punctuated by women who refused to be forgotten. Sarah Wilson escaped indentured servitude in Frederick by impersonating the queen's sister. Baltimorean Virginia Hall became a spy during WWII known as The Limping Lady due to having only one leg. From Westminster, Sadie Kneller Miller became an early sports journalist before undertaking assignments across the globe. From famous figures like Harriet Tubman to unsung heroines like "Lady Law" Violet Hill Whyte, author Lauren R. Silberman introduces Maryland's most tenacious and adventurous women.

Lauren Silberman is the author of the award-winning Wild Women of Maryland (History Press, 2015), Wicked Baltimore (History Press, 2011), and The Jewish Community of Baltimore (Arcadia Publishing, 2008). She also writes cozy mysteries as Daphne Silver. Crime and Parchment (Level Best Books, 2023), the first in the rare books cozy mystery series, won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery. Its sequel The Tell-Tale Homicide came out from Level Best Books in 2024.

She serves as the Major Gifts Officer with The Arc Prince George's County. She has spent over two decades working in the cultural arts sector, including as the director of development with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, deputy director of Historic London Town and Gardens, a program officer with the American Alliance of Museums, and the education and program coordinator with the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

September Lunch and Learn: FLEE NORTH: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland

Join Scott Shane, the author of FLEE NORTH: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland, to hear the astonishing story of Thomas Smallwood, born into slavery near Washington, who bought his freedom, became a shoemaker and began organizing mass escapes from slavery from Washington, Baltimore and the surrounding counties. With the help of a younger white abolitionist, Charles Torrey, Smallwood took wagonloads of men, women and children into Pennsylvania, urging them not to stop until they reached Canada. And Smallwood wrote about the escapes in satirical newspaper dispatches, an extraordinary work of journalism and literature in which he gave the underground railroad its name. Many of those Smallwood helped to flee north approached him after learning that they were about to be sold south by domestic slave traders like Hope Slatter, who operated his private "slave jail" near Baltimore's harbor.

FLEE NORTH was named one of the best 10 books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly ("This astonishing and propulsive narrative rights a historical wrong by returning [Thomas] Smallwood to prominence. It's an absolute must-read") and one of top 20 by Amazon ("Scott Shane's narrative account is visceral, a stunning feat of historical storytelling as you're transported into the terrifying life of an enslaved person in 1800s Baltimore"). Henry Louis Gates Jr. called it "riveting" and Taylor Branch called it "a treasure."

Scott Shane was a reporter for 15 years at The New York Times, where he was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes, and before that for 21 years at The Baltimore Sun. His two previous books are Dismantling Utopia, a firsthand account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Objective Troy, the story of an American terrorist killed in a drone strike on orders of President Obama. In 2019-2020 he was a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught courses on media and on the Russian attack on the 2016 American presidential election.