Historian/Scholar Honors

To persons who have published and are respected in the academic and professional historian community

The 2025 honorees

Antonia Hylton

Antonia Hylton’s Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum investigates the history of Crownsville Hospital (1911-2004), once Maryland’s only mental institution for Black patients, exposing decades of neglect, abuse, and systemic racism. Hylton saw Crownsville as “a dumping ground for poor, undesired, and nonconforming Blacks.” In addition, until the 1940s, there were no Blacks on the medical or nursing staff, who often treated the Black patients with indifference. In the 1950s, a large number of Blacks began to work there, improving the sensitivity of the care rendered. Hylton based Madness on ten years of interviews and a thorough investigation of the hospital’s archives. Combining rigorous research and personal narratives with clarity and compassion, Hylton sheds light on the intersection of race, mental health, and institutional injustice in America. Her work honors the memories of those forgotten while also challenging readers to confront the ongoing disparities in mental health care and pushing forward a vital conversation about equity and reform.

Kara Mae Harris

Kara Mae Harris is an extraordinary culinary historian. Beginning her ground-breaking work in 2011 in the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, she has amassed a huge database. Since 2015, she has published a culinary history blog called “Old Line Plate,” which contains 350 blog posts (culinary history essays), an index of the 80,000 recipes she has collected, and a long list of Baltimore and Maryland cookbooks she has cataloged. Harris has also published three books that focus exclusively on Maryland/Baltimore culinary history, including Old Line Plate: Stories & Recipes from Maryland (2021), Festive Maryland Recipes: Holiday Recipes from the Old Line State (2023), and Old Line Plate Readers’ Collection. A life-long Marylander and resident of Baltimore since 2000, she has presented her work at many local venues. Her work has been featured in the Sun, Baltimore Fishbowl, Baltimore Banner, BMore Art, Baltimore Magazine, Baltimore Style, Chesapeake Bay Magazine, and the Washington Post and on WYPR’s On the Record, CBS Sunday Mornings, Maryland Farm & Harvest (MPT), and Preservation Maryland’s Preservecast.

Baltimore’s Historic Laurel Cemetery Project

In 2015, University of Baltimore archaeologist Dr. Ronald Castanzo invited the Coppin State University Anthropology program to participate in an urban archaeology project at the site of the Baltimore’s former Laurel Cemetery. The goal was simple: to determine whether burials still remained at the site despite the official story that all burials had been removed prior to the construction of the shopping center. Over the next two summers, student volunteers participated in supervised archaeological excavations and were trained in remote-sensing techniques. Together, the Baltimore Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Enoch Pratt librarian Eva Slezak, and State and City archivists were able to document more than five hundred Laurel burials. The work of the exciting public history project is documented in the 2023 book, A Place for Memory: Baltimore’s Historic Laurel Cemetery. The book highlights and historicizes underexplored and forgotten people and events associated with the cemetery. Additionally, this text details the unsuccessful fight to prevent the cemetery’s destruction.

Past honorees, in alphabetical order

José F. Anderson (2023)
Jean H. Baker (2007)

Joseph Balkoski (2013)

Stanley F. Battle (2005)

Howell S. Baum (2013)

Randall Beirne (2006)

Jane Berger (2024)

David S. Bogen (2017)

Taylor Branch (2004)

James Bready (2012)

John R. Breihan (2010)

Christopher Brown (2017)

Lawrence T. Brown (2022)

Robert J. Brugger (2004)

Suzanne Ellery Chappelle (2003)

Ralph Clayton (2019)

Robert I. (Ric) Cottom (2009)

Matthew Crenson (2018)

Josh S. Cutler (2020)

Amy Davis (2022)

Jed Dietz (2014)

Louis S. Diggs (2009)

James Dilts (2007)

Elaine Eff (2014)

William V. Elder, III (2004)

Jessica Elfenbein (2008)

Charles Fecher (2012)

Elizabeth Fee (2016)

Jerome R. Garitee (2015)

Larry Gibson (2019)

Eric L. Goldstein (2019)

Dennis Patrick Halpin (2020)

Mary Ellen Hayward (2007)

Robert K. Headley (2023)

Martha S. Jones (2020)

Robert C. Keith (2011)

Adam Malka (2023)

Roland McConnell (2004)

John McGrain (2012)

Philip J. Merrill (2021)

Charles Mitchell (2018)

Teresa Moyer (2024)

Francis P. O'Neill (2010)

Sherry Olson (2006)

Ed Orser (2007)

Edward C. Papenfuse (2011)

E. Evans Paull (2023)

Antero Pietila (2010)

Garrett Power (2014)

Deborah Rudacille (2015)

Mary P. Ryan (2016)

Gilbert Sandler (2004)

Hon. James F. Schneider (2006)

Scott Shane (2024)

Scott S. Sheads (2005)

Frank R. Shivers, Jr. (2003)

Colin Fraser Smith (2011)

David Taft Terry (2021)

Deborah R. Weiner (2019)