2023 Annual Report

Support Our Work

Dear Friends –

Since the founding of our organization, we have been showing up for racial justice. It played a central role in the first case we were involved in, seeking some measure of justice for Orphan Jones, aka Euel Lee, in 1931, the case spurred the first gathering of what would become the ACLU of Maryland. A Black man from Virginia, Lee was racially mistreated, threatened with lynching by a white mob on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Lee was beaten before he was questioned, brutalized, charged with murder, and denied counsel.

More than ninety years later, the ACLU of Maryland continues to show up -- and evolve – on our journey for race equity that began at our founding. We ask ourselves, and each other, each day: What can we all do now to make things truly different? To achieve systemic change that overcomes white supremacy? To ensure we are not faced with the same racist inhumanity after another 90 years in Maryland?

We need change, which is why we developed a four-year strategic plan that has as its centerpiece a fundamentally different way of working. Coalitions are growing across the state – including with equal vigor in Western Maryland & the Eastern Shore – that center the leadership and experience of Marylanders directly impacted by state systems that perpetuate injustice. The ACLU of Maryland is committed to centering and investing in this work and together making a deep and lasting impact.  

It's working.

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"We Show Up" video transcript available here

Support Our Work

This year, led by residents on the Eastern Shore, we changed Federalsburg’s election system and paved the way for the election of the first Black officials in the town’s 200-year history. Along with partners, we passed the Child Interrogation Protection Act, which provides age-appropriate due process protections for children being interrogated by police, both to protect their rights and against false confessions. Together with community groups across the state, we are working to ensure that Baltimore City and Maryland’s 23 counties have a strong, community-led Police Accountability Board. And so much more.

Thank you for showing up as members of our community. We are proud to count on you among our friends, allies, and supporters as we pull out all the stops for 2024. It is hard to overstate the challenges ahead. We face well-organized, better-funded opponents whose efforts are cynical, effective, and grease the skids for democratic decline, if not outright authoritarianism.

But we aren’t just trying to stem a backward slide of our rights. We are showing up for a vision of something greater: A Maryland where we can exercise our rights so that the law values and uplifts our humanity. Please sign up online to become a member and join us at activities across the state!

With gratitude and in solidarity,

Dana Vickers Shelley
Executive Director
ACLU of Maryland

Corey Stottlemyer
President, Board of Directors
ACLU of Maryland

2023 ACLU of Maryland Annual Report (PDF)

Annual report content by Meredith Curtis Goode, Craig Lee, Jenny Trust, Shaqué Ingram, Amy Cruice, Gina Elleby, and Rosemary Ardman.

Annual report and web design by Nicole McCann.