Enoch Pratt Free Library

Honoring the memory, career, and bequest of Baltimore journalist, satirist, social critic, and scholar Henry Louis Mencken. The day consists of three parts:

- A pop-up exhibit featuring the Mencken Collection in the Special Collections
- Reading Room from 10am - 4pm
- The Mencken Society Annual Meeting at 10:30am
- The Mencken Memorial Lecture from 2pm-3pm.
- 10:30 am, Mencken Society Annual Meeting (open to the public)

2:00 pm, 2026 Mencken Memorial Lecture delivered by historian Andrew Holter (live and streaming)

In this lecture, Mike Casiano will draw from his recent book, Let Us Alone, to explore the racial origins of policing in Baltimore. The lecture will detail two interconnected themes. First, it will examine how policing evolved from an inefficient and vigilante-driven system into a modern and paramilitary endeavor focused on suppressing citizens and maximizing the power, wealth, and reach of capitalists. Second, it will analyze how decades of racial antagonism shaped Baltimore policing into an apparatus primarily oriented around subduing Black freedom. Specifically, the talk will focus on the racialized nature of public order policing, the militarization of the Baltimore police, and violations of due process in the court system.



Mike Casiano is an associate professor in UMBC’s Department of American Studies and a core faculty member in UMBC’s Public Humanities minor. His book, Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore’s Police State, examines the relationship between policing, municipal governance, and race in post-Civil War Baltimore. Mike’s next project is a labor history of early twentieth century port cities in the Mid-Atlantic that examines the relationship between policing, unionization, and race. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford Bibliographies, the Journal of Southern History, and the Journal of Urban History



ASL interpretation will be available for attendees.



Presented in partnership with The Maryland State Archives and The Maryland Four Centuries Project.

Join us for an evening with author and journalist Lois Romano.

Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society’s expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary’s early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.

But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies—influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.

Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood—by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait—of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America’s greatest presidents.

Lois Romano will be joined in conversation by Baltimore Banner Editor in Chief Audrey Cooper.

Congratulations to our 2026 PRATTpreneur cohort, who successfully completed their summer program with a Pitch Day 👏

Over the course of 6 weeks, teens ages 14-16 learned skills ranging from the fundamentals of business theory, how to build and maintain a sustainable business, and how to pitch their business to potential funders.

During their Pitch Day, PRATTpreneur students pitched the businesses they created during the program to judges, funders, peers, family, and members of their audience. Pitch Day winners were awarded funds to support the launch of their new businesses.

Learn more about PRATTpreneur and upcoming programs by visiting our website 👆