Past Chautauqua Performances

For 26 years, Maryland Humanities’ Chautauqua brought more than 80 historical figures to life for Marylanders all over the state!

While we will no longer present new Chautauqua performances, many past performances are available for viewing on YouTube, filmed and edited courtesy of our friends at Montgomery College Television.

Theme Year Characters
Raising Their Voices 2020 Margaret Brent, Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Lou Hamer
Making Waves 2019 Matthew Henson, Grace O’Malley, Jacques Cousteau
Seeking Justice 2018 Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt
Voices from the Great War 2017 W.E.B. Du Bois, General John Pershing, President Woodrow Wilson
Masters of Their Craft 2016 Duke Ellington, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ernest Hemingway
Sporting Lives 2015 Wilma Rudolph, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe
Creative Women: Breaking the Mold 2014 Emily Dickinson, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe
Turning Points in History 2013 Rachel Carson, Jackie Robinson, Amelia Earhart
Inspiration, Unity, Preparedness, Courage: Maryland and the War of 1812 2012 James Madison, Rosalie Stier Calvert, Major General Robert Ross, Francis Scott Key, Mary Pickersgill
The American Civil War: A House Divided 2011 Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman
Beyond Boundaries 2010 Thurgood Marshall, Sacagawea, Frederick Law Olmsted
Rights and Reformers 2009 Woody Guthrie, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt
Civil Rights: Taking a Stand 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, George Wallace
Food for Thought 2007 George Washington Carver, Cesar Chavez, Julia Child, Upton Sinclair
Creativity and Imagination 2006 Coco Chanel, Leonardo da Vinci, Henry Ford, Paul Robeson
War and Democracy: Personal Journeys 2005 Margaret Bourke-White, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, George Orwell
The American Environment: Voices and Choices 2004 Rachel Carson, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau
Let Freedom Ring 2003 Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Paine, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
America on a Soapbox 2002 Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Theodore Roosevelt, Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Creating a New Nation 2001 Abigail Adams, Benjamin Banneker, George Washington, Phillis Wheatley
Maryland in the Civil War 2000 Clara Barton, William Lloyd Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman
American Originals 1999 W. E. B. Du Bois, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, Georgia O’Keeffe
American Humorists 1998 Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, Will Rogers, James Thurber, Mark Twain
Literary Maryland 1997 F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, H. L. Mencken, Edgar Allan Poe
A Voice in America 1996 Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt
Democracy in America 1995 P. T. Barnum, Horace Greeley, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Maria Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Wright

Illustrations by Tom Chalkley, Baltimore, MD