July Virtual Lunch and Learn

Presenter: Dr. Richard Bell, University of Maryland

Description: Dr. Richard Bell, the author of Stolen, tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America. Their ordeal shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black-market network of human traffickers who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Dr. Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award and the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.