Arundel Center North renamed after Sarah Carter, the County Council’s first and only Black female member

The Arundel Center North building, which houses government offices and classrooms for Anne Arundel Community College’s Glen Burnie Town Center Campus, will be renamed Monday after the late, former Council member Sarah Carter.

In 1974, Carter became the first Black woman to serve on the Anne Arundel County Council and to this day remains the only one.

Carter, who died in 1998 at age 77, served two four-year terms on the council during which she fought against industrial projects, engaged underrepresented voters and advocated for the rights of public servants including police officers and firefighters. She lived in the northern part of the county in the Cedar Hill community near Brooklyn Park.

She was first elected to the seat in the 1970s, narrowly winning her Democratic Party primary and then winning a countywide general election as was the process for County Council elections at the time. She became both the first Black person and one of the first three women on the council in 1974.

This building was chosen to bear Carter’s name in part because she attended the community college. The date was specifically chosen as it is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, a critical moment in Black history nationally, just as Carter’s election was a critical moment in Black history locally.

When Carter’s daughter, Vanessa Carter, 69, first learned about the renaming plans several months ago she was, “surprised, excited and frankly, I said, mostly to myself, ‘And it’s about time,’” she said.

While there were efforts throughout the years to name events honoring her mother, nothing truly enduring had come to fruition, Vanessa Carter said.

“My mother never looked for any glory or recognition or anything,” her daughter said. “It was a nice surprise that somebody finally figured out a way to make recognition that would be lasting, as long as the building is there her name will be on it, lord willing.”

The effort to get the building renamed was spearheaded by the Caucus of African American Leaders and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee as part of a 10-year, ongoing effort to name more buildings and locations in the area after Black changemakers.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is make sure those legacies survive,” said Carl Snowden, the caucus’s convener.

In recent years, the caucus successfully lobbied to have the Annapolis police station named after the city’s first Black police chief, Joseph Johnson, and a Housing Authority Commission of Annapolis building named after Elizamae Robinson, whose achievements on the authority’s board of commissioners included organizing the longest rent strike in the state’s history.

Not only did the caucus and committee come up with the idea, choose the location and find a time they felt was right due to who was in charge at the local level, Snowden said, they raised $10,000 to pay for the change.

“When people go into the building to go to Anne Arundel Community College when their college classes are held there they’ll see her name on the building and hopefully prompt people to research, find out more of who she was,” Snowden said.

From the family’s perspective, Vanessa Carter is thrilled this is happening now when some of her family members who are getting older will be around to witness the public renaming ceremony Monday.

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The event will be led, among others, by current County Council Chair Pete Smith, who was named the council’s first Black chair last year, 48 years after Carter became the body’s first Black member.

“Being the third African-American and the first chair on the council literally could not have happened if she was not the first at what she did,” Smith said. “I’m honored to have walked down the path that she paved.”

Carter’s advocacy work, much of which was inspired by her Christian faith, her daughter said, extended beyond the bounds of the County Council.

She helped create a health clinic, Well Baby Clinic in Brooklyn Park, aimed at closing the healthcare access gap across demographics in her area. Carter also worked with the county’s Community Action Agency in its early days, helped campaign for the county’s charter form of government (both a governing board and executive) and started a teen club in her neighborhood with her husband, William Ray Carter.

“She was just a dynamo,” Vanessa Carter said.

Snowden and his colleagues aren’t stopping these efforts to recognize local Black leaders anytime soon. They are currently proposing creating tributes at the Maryland State House to late, former Democrat Congressmen Parren Mitchell, the first Black person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland and Elijah Cummings.

“The county is going, in my mind, in certainly a positive direction and it isn’t just about color,” Smith said. “What it is about when people of varying backgrounds are elected to the office is it does provide a roadmap for others who look like them and that is what is important — when we diversify the leadership that exists here in the county.”