Rename Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship (Fire Protection Engineering, University of Maryland)
- stopsarahb
- May 8, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Please sign the Petition at change.org to rename the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship, University of Maryland,
Department of Fire Protection Engineering
Thank You
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The Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship at the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Fire Protection Engineering should be renamed or discontinued. Sarah Bryan embodied values inconsistent with any ethical, self-respecting institution. Sarah Bryan was my mother and she was violent, abusive, and grossly bigoted.
Sarah Bryan opposed the civil rights movement and school desegregation, openly denigrated people not born in the US, and was violently homophobic. She liked saying that UMD admitted "too many black basketball players", that she was proud to be a "loudmouth white woman" and that Martin Luther King had "deserved" to be shot.She refused to read, cared nothing about the world, and refused to associate with anyone who did. She regularly criticized other UMD families behind their backs as "too smart" and "not normal".
In my regard, Sarah was also a classic child abuser. She would hit, slap, threaten, bully, mimic, and make homophobic remarks about me as a child. She refused to provide proper medical care, refused to get help for my ulcerative colitis (resulting in my colon almost rupturing and later having to be removed), and broke my hand and then refused to take me to the doctor until the school nurse intervened. Sarah repeatedly threatened to abandon or "institutionalize" me, called me homophobic slurs as a child, and attacked me when I came out. She encouraged similar behavior and character in my older sister.
Sarah Bryan's views and conduct were retrograde and reprehensible for their time and remain so today. My father John L. Bryan, who founded the Fire Protection Engineering program at UMD, set up the scholarship after Sarah died from smoking. He was not abusive, though he did (far less vocally) share many of Sarah's attitudes. Despite my asking them to stop, the Fire Protection Engineering Department continues to promote Sarah as a woman of "intelligence, convictions, courage and character", which is a gross distortion of who and what Sarah was and the values and conduct she stood for.
Sarah Bryan was a bigot and a child abuser, not to mention ludicrously incompetent. Her "convictions" consisted of a preference for segregation and a generalized, screeching violence. She should not be honored and no organization should be supporting the sort of ignorance, bigotry, and abuse that Sarah embodied.
Joan Bryan with 2016 recipients