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From Hopwood to Hollywood to joy in the morning
“A fragment from the heart” In 1943, at the age of 47, an unheralded writer named Betty Smith published her first novel, a semi-autobiographical account of an idealistic young girl fighting to survive...
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‘These young Americans’
A campus in crisis Dr. Harley Haynes was in a dead panic. As director of University Hospital, Haynes was losing employees by the day. Others were striking for higher wages. Japanese high school...
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Life at Prettyman’s
First, a football star Horace Greely Prettyman (1857-1945) was a Michigan football hero in the 1880s, when the sport had scarcely begun. Tall and strong, he had movie-star looks before there were...
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When ‘Red Emma’ came to town
‘Five hundred rowdies’ “Ann Arbor! Brain producer of Michigan, hide thy face in shame!” So scolded Emma Goldman, the most famous radical of the day, after facing down a wild crowd of Michigan students...
View ArticleThe unsinkable Sarah E. Ray
In 1945, Sarah Elizabeth Ray was denied passage on a ferry on the Detroit River because she was Black. She fought the injustice, became a civil rights activist, and her case went all the way to the...
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Christmas, Crosby, and ‘the Code’
A very Crosby Christmas Paramount Pictures, 1954 Three movies made in the decade after World War II are embedded in the American culture of Christmas — It’s a Wonderful Life (1946); Miracle on 34th...
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The ‘super-university’ moves north
The ground-breaking In a light spring drizzle on May 23, 1952, Regent Roscoe O. Bonisteel turned over a spadeful of good farm topsoil just north of the Huron River. Next with the shovel came four...
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Governor Cass and the Indians
On the banks of the Maumee As summer waned in 1817, Lewis Cass, the young governor of the Michigan Territory, arrived at a wooden bastion on Ohio’s Maumee River to talk with chiefs of the Wyandot,...
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Thirteen days in 1970: The BAM strike
A troubling letter Shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, U-M President Robben W. Fleming received a troubling letter from the regional director of the Michigan Civil...
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‘On a scale of 1 to 5, are you….’
Rensis Likert and the science of society How do people feel about the president? The new laundry detergent? The state of the world? Until Rensis Likert, it was hard to say. As a graduate student in...
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Michigan’s affirmative action debate
‘A blueprint for fundamental change’ To settle the Black Action Movement strike in 1970, the University promised enough financial aid to raise Black enrollment to 10 percent. The aid promise was kept,...
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When everyone registered in Waterman Gym
“If you can do better, go to it” Women students confer with an orientation adviser before registration. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.) Once upon a time, in the 1800s, Michigan...
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Yost builds the Big (bigger, and biggest) House
Football ticket fever Yost was featured on the cover of a 1926 football program a year before the dedication of Michigan Stadium. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley HIstorical Library.) A century ago,...
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The peace protesters vs. the president: 1935
The thorn in his side At first, President Alexander Grant Ruthven watched Michigan’s small cadre of rebellious students with detached amusement. They “have a good time wrangling with each other,” he...
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The professor and the waltzing mice
High-toned nonsense The zoologist Alexander Grant Ruthven, Michigan’s president from 1929-51, never wanted to see the University in the newspapers. The danger was running afoul of the state legislature...
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November 1969: ‘It just changed everything’
‘Bo who?’ Coach Bo Schembechler and his first captain, tight end Jim Mandich. (Image courtesy of U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.) By the end of the 1968 season, Michigan football had been on the...
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Who was Robben Fleming?
The man who kept Michigan’s cool When demolition crews brought down the Fleming Administration Building in 2022, students watching from a safe distance must have had only the foggiest image of the...
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How Michigan planted its flag on Greenland — or tried to
An island under ice What is it about Greenland that tickles the acquisitive spirit? After all, it’s a pretty desolate place. Some 80% of its 836,000 square miles is covered by glacial ice to a depth of...
View ArticleA sporting chance
At the onset of the 20th century, women’s athletics expanded in the United States and at the University of Michigan. Women students took up tennis, archery, fencing, horseback riding, and more. The...
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The Futurist: Duderstadt and the Media Union
A fast start In the farming town of Carrollton, Missouri, pop. 4,554, James Johnson Duderstadt grew to 6’5.” At Yale, he played football, majored in electrical engineering, and graduated summa cum...
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