The University of Maryland announced Friday it’s renaming the women’s studies department after Harriet Tubman – the 19-century abolitionist and famous female “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

“It is my honor to announce a major milestone in our university's history: the first honorific naming of an academic department at UMD, the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,” University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines said in a letter Friday.

“It is fitting that this heroic Marylander is now honored at the state's flagship university. The department is widely acclaimed for its unique concentration in Black feminist thought and intersectionality, and it is the only department in the nation that offers a Black women's studies minor, jointly with the Department of African American Studies,” Pines said. “Historically, Black women have played a brave and critical role in social justice. Harriet Tubman's life and her dedication to freedom and equality speaks directly to the department's mission, now and in the years ahead.”