ANNAPOLIS, md. — Anne Arundel County high schoolers are invited to compete in a racial justice essay contest with a $5,000 college scholarship prize sponsored by the Equal Justice Initiative.
The contest, open to students in ninth through 12th grade, will judge essays that best connect historical racial justice events to current issues and events. Essays must be submitted by Aug. 7. Eligibility, rules and guidelines can be found on the contest’s website.
The announcement of the contest coincides with the dedication of a historical marker on Calvert Street in Annapolis that memorializes where five black victims were lynched in acts of racial terror between 1875 and 1911, EJI said in statement. At least 40 lynchings occurred in Maryland from 1875 to 1933. The winners of the contest will be announced at the marker’s unveiling at 10 a.m., Sept. 7.
The Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative worked in conjunction with the organization Connecting the Dots-Remembrance and Reconciliation Project to offer the scholarship opportunity as part of the EJI’s Community and Historical Marker Project, aimed at confronting America’s long legacy of racial and economic injustice and inequality. EJI may be best known for the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Such efforts attempt to recognize the legacies of enslaved Africans and their descendants in America, spanning a long history that includes more than 4,400 lynchings by World War II, Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration, and the civil rights movement, EJI said.
The dark history continues to have an effect on black and other oppressed people through today.
