Remove Francis King Carey’s name from the University of Maryland Law School! 

Naming the University of Maryland School of Law after Francis King Carey whitewashes Carey’s ongoing influence on racist labor and immigration policy and sends a harmful message to students that the University of Maryland system generally and the University of Maryland School of Law, in particular, endorse Carey’s racist views and practices.

In the early 20th century, Francis King Carey pioneered bigoted employment practices in the sugar beet fields of eastern Colorado. Carey’s innovations inspired racist immigration policies which still echo today. As the owner of the National Sugar Manufacturing Company, Carey devised “Labor Committees” to prevent workers from negotiating wages and working conditions independently with farmers, to set wages at the lowest possible rate, to isolate workers from local communities, and to enlist state repression to control workers.

Carey imported seasonal labor from New Mexico and from south of the border. Entire families came from New Mexico, but even though the women and children all worked, Carey paid only the men. Of immigrants, Carey wrote, “The advantage of getting Old Mexican labor, of course, is that it is under discipline and can’t run away.”

For more on the history of Francis King Carey and his ongoing impact, see Dionicio Valdes, “Francis King Carey, the Beet Sugar Industry, and the Roots of Mexican Contract Labor Imperialism,”

Public displays honoring racism and racists like Francis King Carey are coming under long-overdue scrutiny. Statues come down, sports teams change their branding, and schools change their mascots. In January 2020, the University of California dropped “Boalt Hall,” its famous and prestigious trademark name, from its flagship law school when John Boalt’s history as a champion of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 came to light. We demand that the University of Maryland School of Law follow the University of California and others on the path of justice and drop the name “Francis King Carey.”

Sign the petition to remove King’s name from this institution!

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