University of Maryland Professor of History Richard Bell, an expert of early American history and slavery, abolition and resistance, has been named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The philanthropic organization awarded the 26 new fellows $200,000 each to fund significant research and writing in the social sciences and humanities that address important and enduring issues confronting society.
Bell’s stipend will support research for his book, “The First Freedom Riders: Streetcars and Street Fights in Jim Crow New York,” which will tell the story of mid-19th-century Black New Yorkers who campaigned to desegregate public transit with pioneering civil disobedience strategies.
“I’m delighted to receive this funding from the Carnegie Corporation,” Bell said. “Support for humanities research is essential, now more than ever, and, frankly, I’m over the moon to have the resources to pursue my work on this aspect of the freedom struggle in America for the next few years.”
In total, the 26 scholars who make up this year’s class of Carnegie Fellows will focus on research topics including pandemic recovery, climate change, immigration, racial justice and more. They were selected from 311 nominations for the program, started in 2015.
