In Memoriam: Gladys-Marie Frye

The Department is saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Emerita Gladys-Marie Frye. Gladys-Marie joined the Department as an associate professor in 1969 and retired as a full professor thirty years later.

She was a distinguished scholar of African-American material culture, with books on Night Riders in Black Folk History (U Tennessee P, 1975) and Stitched From the Soul:  Quilting in the Ante-Bellum South (Dutton, 1990  On the subject of her second book, slave quilts, she was perhaps the leading expert.  Gladys-Marie herself owned an extensive collection of such quilts, which she allowed to be exhibited at the University of Maryland.  She had served as a consultant to the Smithsonian and had curated exhibits at numerous museums.  Her grants and awards included a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, and many more.  Gladys-Marie was important to the department’s building of its nationally renowned African-American program.  We mourn her passing and honor her contribution to our institution.