When University of Maryland students walk to class, most may not realize they are stepping on an old plantation where slaves once were forced to harvest wheat.

A university professor plans to delve deeper into the school’s roots through a class, in which he’ll teach students how to research the school’s ties to slavery.

This inquiry follows a growing trend nationwide among colleges grappling with scars from the past.

“Slavery is ultimately ground zero for race relations,” said Ira Berlin, a historian who will teach the yearlong course next school year at College Park.

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“When people think about how we can better reform the relationship between black people and white people, they become engaged with the question of slavery.”

Students were forced to explore race relations last semester after someone hung a noose at the university’s black cultural center, igniting a debate about the racial climate on campus.

Students enrolled in Berlin’s course will comb archives and release a report on their findings.

The students will research Charles Benedict Calvert, a congressman and slave owner who founded the Maryland Agricultural College in 1859 on part of his estate.

“It’s a difficult topic to research because the things we do have that are written by him were destroyed, scattered or didn’t survive,” said Elizabeth McAllister, the school’s acting curator of historical manuscripts.

Benjamin Hallowell, the college’s first president in 1859, once asked whether slaves constructed campus buildings and was relieved to learn that free labor was used instead, according to his autobiography. Hallowell, a Quaker, became president under the condition that the college farm not use slaves and he serve without pay.

U.Md.’s examination into slavery follows the lead of Brown University, which released a report showing that school trustees participated in the slave trade.

Emory University, Yale University and University of Virginia also have explored their ties to slavery.

Al Brophy, a history professor at the University of Alabama, researched how faculty there used to beat slaves.

Researching universities’ links to slavery, he said, “is a piece of a much larger movement to go back and re-examine ways in which the past burdens the present.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com