Raymond A. Pearson, 1890-1935 and undated

This series includes correspondence, financial and budgetary records, meeting minutes, organizational charts, legal pleadings, newspaper clippings, class schedules, photographs, and other materials documenting Raymond A. Pearson's tenure as president of the University of Maryland from 1926 to 1935. The records cover campus life, especially at College Park; construction and expansion at the Baltimore and College Park campuses; and the wide-ranging financial, social, and academic impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s on the welfare of the university.

These records document several significant issues and events of Raymond Pearson's administration. A lengthy debate regarding military training occurred when two students, Ennis H. Coale and Wayne Lees, were expelled for refusing to enroll in a mandatory course. The ensuing lawsuit received nationwide publicity and was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court of the United States; the controversy is recorded in files on anti-war and anti-communism, Ennis H. Coale, the Military Department, and Military Training. Race relations and segregation are well documented in the records of Pearson's oversight of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, known then as the Princess Anne Academy for Negroes. Lawsuits by African-Americans Donald Murray and Clarence Mitchell, who fought to end the university's restrictive admissions practices, are recorded in correspondence with the Attorney General and in the files of the Graduate School and Law School. Finally, several files chronicle faculty and student dissatisfaction with President Pearson, whose tenure was fraught with high faculty turnover, resentment of low salaries, and a perceived decline in the university's academic standards. These difficulties, which ultimately led to his forced resignation in 1935, are documented in folders concerning the Board [of Regents] Investigation, the Diamondback, and Pearson himself.

Pearson's more notable correspondents included Governor Albert C. Ritchie; U. S. Senators William Cabell Bruce and Phillips Lee Goldsborough; University of Maryland Regent and U. S. Representative William P. Cole, Jr.; landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.; Secretary of the Interior and Public Works Administration head Harold L. Ickes; and General Douglas MacArthur. Among the many university officials with whom Pearson corresponded were Harry C. Byrd; Adele Stamp; C. O. Appleman; H. J. Patterson; Thomas B. Symons; and Maude F. McKenney. Folders are arranged alphabetically by subject. Some files are restricted, due to privacy issues related to student or personnel records.