Lord Baltimore Fellow Virtual Lecture—Disability and Education at the Maryland School for the Blind, 1853–1910

This talk will sketch a brief history of what is now the Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) from its 1853 founding in downtown Baltimore to its relocation outside of the city in the early 1900s. MCHC’s 2026 Lord Baltimore Research Fellow Amanda Stuckey, PhD, tells this history through what can be pieced together of individual students’ experiences as they appear in MCHC collections. Features unique to the MSB can be traced in students’ localized experiences and in the school’s nineteenth and early twentieth century history; yet the MSB also reflects the evolution of nation-wide attitudes toward disability in the United States.