UMD Tennis Team Suspended: The Roots of Campus Klan Imagery
By Darius Spearman (africanelements)
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Outrage at College Park: What Happened at the Tournament
The University of Maryland, College Park suspended its club tennis team after members circulated white-supremacist imagery. Tournament organizers distributed digital welcome packets to visiting regional teams in mid-October. Howard University, a historically Black institution located nearby in Washington, D.C., was among the invited schools. The materials featured an altered Maryland state flag that replaced traditional symbols with pointed Ku Klux Klan hoods (insidehighered.com, theguardian.com).
The club tennis president at Howard University discovered the image and reported it immediately (theguardian.com). Student-athletes from Howard demanded a full investigation, mandatory sensitivity training, and a public apology. UMD President Darryll J. Pines condemned the imagery and placed the club tennis organization on indefinite suspension (insidehighered.com, wusa9.com). University leadership also referred the incident to the University of Maryland Police Department and the Office of Student Conduct. Maryland Club Tennis leaders issued a public apology and sent a financial donation to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (theguardian.com, wusa9.com).
The Plantation Foundations of College Park
This incident cannot be viewed in isolation from the university’s institutional beginnings. The school was chartered in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College. Charles Benedict Calvert, a wealthy planter, founded the institution on land carved from his family’s Rossburg Farm estate (whilbr.org). Calvert held 52 Black men, women, and children in bondage in 1860, as documented by university archival researchers (whilbr.org). Enslaved laborers cleared the fields, built the early facilities, and sustained the campus operations.
For nearly a century, the university functioned as an explicitly segregated institution for white students only. Black scholars could not attend the flagship campus until landmark civil rights litigation forced open the doors. Hiram Whittle became the first Black undergraduate student admitted to the university in 1951 (dbknews.com). These historical realities mirror the broader post-emancipation struggles faced by Black communities across the American South. The physical landscape of the campus remains tied to this legacy of forced labor and exclusion.
Campus Hate Crimes by Motivation
The Maryland Flag and Civil War Division
The altered graphic weaponized a state symbol that possesses its own complicated history. Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, yet residents stood fiercely divided. Union supporters flew the black-and-gold colors of the Calvert family coat of arms. In contrast, Confederate soldiers from Maryland marched under the red-and-white bottony cross of the Crossland family (wikipedia.org). Confederate sympathizers pinned the Crossland design to their uniforms to display rebellion against the federal government.
Following Reconstruction, state leaders designed a blended flag to project reconciliation between former foes. Officials quartered the Calvert and Crossland banners together, and the state legislature adopted the design in 1904 (wikipedia.org). By substituting Ku Klux Klan hoods into the Crossland quadrants, the tennis team flyer revived explicit white-supremacist terror. The altered banner converted a historical compromise into an aggressive racial insult aimed directly at visiting Black college athletes.
The Ku Klux Klan Legacy in Prince George’s County
The imagery circulated by the team tapped into an established history of Klan activity in the surrounding region. During the 1920s, the Second Ku Klux Klan gained substantial support throughout Maryland. Prince George’s County, Western Maryland, and the Eastern Shore hosted active klaverns that conducted parades, cross burnings, and public rallies (whilbr.org). Hooded members gathered openly to intimidate Black citizens, Catholic immigrants, and Jewish families.
Historically Black colleges emerged in response to these exact patterns of racial terror and civic exclusion. Institutions like Howard University and Bowie State University served as sanctuaries for intellectual growth and community protection. Black leaders recognized that institutions focused on education and civil rights were essential for survival. Sending Klan imagery to Howard athletes directly echoed the intimidation tactics deployed by white-supremacist groups a century ago.
Maryland Bias Incidents by Target
The Shadow of Richard Collins III
The tennis team controversy hit a campus community still healing from deadly racial violence. In May 2017, Second Lieutenant Richard W. Collins III visited friends at the College Park campus. Collins was a 23-year-old Black senior and ROTC cadet at nearby Bowie State University (washingtonpost.com, dbknews.com). While waiting at a bus stop near Montgomery Hall, a white UMD student named Sean Urbanski fatally stabbed him without provocation (washingtonpost.com, wusa9.com).
Investigators discovered that Urbanski belonged to a white-supremacist digital group called Alt-Reich: Nation (washingtonpost.com, dbknews.com). The courts convicted Urbanski of first-degree murder, but the judge dismissed the state hate-crime charge because prosecutors could not prove hatred was the sole motive (washingtonpost.com, wusa9.com). In response, the state legislature passed the Second Lieutenant Richard Collins III Law to permit hate-crime convictions when bias serves as a substantial factor (washingtonpost.com). Collins’s murder remains an unhealed wound for Black students navigating the College Park campus.
Prince George’s County: Black Excellence and Campus Tension
The regional friction surrounding this incident relates closely to the changing demographics of the surrounding area. Over the late twentieth century, Prince George’s County evolved into one of the wealthiest majority-Black counties in the United States. Today, the county population is over 60 percent Black, with substantial community leadership and political clout (lawyerscommittee.org, dbknews.com). The university sits inside a municipality defined by high educational achievement and Black civic authority.
This dynamic creates sharp tension when racially charged incidents occur within campus borders. Students at nearby HBCUs and local residents expect the flagship public university to reflect the inclusive values of the county. When white-supremacist symbols surface on campus, residents view them as an attack on their shared safety. The incident reveals debates over state and local power as communities demand administrative accountability from public institutions.
UMD Dorm Bias Incidents by Motivation
Free Speech, Title VI, and Club Sports Governance
Disciplining students at a public university involves complex legal standards. As a state-funded institution, the University of Maryland must respect First Amendment protections regarding offensive expression (gwu.edu, billofrightsinstitute.org). Campus police and state prosecutors cannot file criminal charges unless speech constitutes an actionable true threat or direct harassment under the law (gwu.edu, billofrightsinstitute.org). A graphic must communicate an explicit intent to inflict physical injury to lose constitutional protection.
However, universities retain clear authority under civil rights statutes and student conduct codes. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act requires colleges to prevent hostile educational environments rooted in racial discrimination (ed.gov). Independent of criminal courts, campus administrators can sanction students who violate university rules. Student club teams frequently operate with minimal administrative oversight compared to varsity athletics. This gap in monitoring allows toxic behaviors to develop unchecked until an external scandal forces administrative intervention (insidehighered.com, theguardian.com).
Moving Beyond Suspensions: The Demand for Accountability
The swift suspension of the tennis team addressed the public relations crisis, but structural questions remain. Howard University athletes emphasized that a simple suspension does not cure the underlying prejudice that led to the flyer. Real accountability requires sustained education, administrative transparency, and honest historical engagement across the student body. The club’s monetary donation to a national Black museum represents an initial gesture toward repair (theguardian.com, wusa9.com).
Healing cannot occur without addressing the broader pattern of hostility that visiting Black students encounter. When symbols of racial terror are dismissed as private jokes, colleges fail in their basic mission. The University of Maryland continues to grapple with the historical contradictions between its plantation roots and its modern multicultural goals. True safety for all scholars will only arrive when institutions confront white supremacy directly, both in historical archives and on modern athletic courts.
About the Author
Darius Spearman is a professor of Black Studies at San Diego City College, where he has been teaching for over 20 years. He is the founder of African Elements, a media platform dedicated to providing educational resources on the history and culture of the African diaspora. Through his work, Spearman aims to empower and educate by bringing historical context to contemporary issues affecting the Black community.
