Hard Histories at Hopkins

Events

Upcoming:

Re-creation of May 2023 Installation Commemorating the Girls Resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum as part of Reparative Arts in Community Engagement (RACE) Conference’s Walk of Remembrance.

  • Time: Friday, October 6, 2023, 2 pm eastern
  • Location: Wyman Park building lawn

Past Events:

Ongoing event series:

Starting in spring 2021, Hard Histories has hosted a series of conversations exploring the histories of Blackness, slavery, and racism in the Maryland area and beyond. View some of these events, as well as other events that Hard Histories has participated in, on YouTube here.

September 7, 2023:

Hard Histories: Reckoning with Racism, Forging Just Futures

  • History tells us how we got here. Hard histories show us a way forward. “Baltimore’s Hard Histories” kicked off on Thursday evening, September 7, 2023, with a keynote conversation between columnist Jamelle Bouie, civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, and museum director Asma Naeem, led by Hard Histories at Hopkins director Martha Jones.

September 8, 2023:

Baltimore’s Hard Histories: Conversations, Community, and Change Roundtables Livestream

  • Baltimore’s Hard Histories continued on Friday, September 8, 2023, with a day of roundtable conversations. In Baltimore, the sum of our work is greater than its parts, and we at Hard Histories at Hopkins hoped this gathering will help make that manifest. Through the experiences of hard history practitioners in the city’s schools, museums, cultural institutions, and faith communities, the day’s four roundtables explored how participants research their institutions’ pasts of racism and discrimination. With new knowledge comes change, and panelists shared the resulting transformations in the narratives they tell, naming and memorialization of their landscapes, changes in how their institutions are led and by whom, and how confrontations with hard histories have reshaped the heart of their missions.
  • Event videos are located here.

May 8, 2023:

Commemoration of the Girls Resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum

  • In May 2023, members of the Hard Histories at Hopkins research lab hosted a pop-up on the site where once stood the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum, on the lawn of what is today the JHU Wyman Park building.
  • Created pursuant to Mr. Johns Hopkins’ 1873 will, the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum operated from 1875 to 1914 and provided lodging and other support to children whose family circumstances kept them from remaining at home.
  • More event details are located here.
Shown are signs representing some, though not all, of the African American girls between 5 and 18 who lived, worked, and were trained at the Johns Hopkins Colored Orphan Asylum as domestic workers.
Installation signs representing the girls who lived, worked, and trained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum
Shown are members and affiliates involved in Hard Histories at Hopkins’ spring 2023 research lab class.
Members and affiliates involved in Hard Histories at Hopkins’ spring 2023 research lab class