The University of Michigan’s Inclusive History Project has convened a task force of university leadership, faculty, staff and students to develop new policies and procedures for new honorific namings of university facilities and spaces.
The task force’s 15 members are drawn from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses and Michigan Medicine. It will begin meeting this month and plans to make recommendations to the Office of the President by the end of the academic year.
MORE INFORMATION
The idea for the task force grew out of work by the IHP — the university’s multifaceted initiative to study, document and share the university’s history of inclusion and exclusion — to better understand the current landscape regarding new and historical namings of facilities and spaces at U-M.
The IHP recommended to President Santa J. Ono, and Ono agreed, that a task force should be formed and recommend revised policies and procedures for new honorific namings at the university.
At the IHP’s recommendation, Ono also decided that the IHP will advise him on matters related to the history of the university, and that a new group, the President’s Advisory Committee on Historical Naming, will provide advice and recommendations on matters related to historical names in and on university buildings. These responsibilities had previously been handled by the President’s Advisory Committee on University History.
Kristin Hass, professor of American culture in LSA and faculty coordinator of the Humanities Collaboratory, will co-chair the Honorific Naming Task Force with IHP co-chair Earl Lewis. Lewis is the Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies and Public Policy; professor of history, and of Afroamerican and African studies in LSA; professor of public policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; and director of the Center for Social Solutions.
MEET THE TASK FORCE
The current policy and guidelines for naming facilities, spaces and streets, first adopted by the Board of Regents in 2008 and revised in subsequent years, govern both donor and honorific namings. They specify that namings may:
- Recognize financial contributions to support the structure or structures named.
- Honor a donor’s long-term and significant financial contributions to the university.
- Honor individuals by recognizing exceptional contributions shaping the university.
- Commemorate university history and traditions.
Beyond providing these broad criteria, the policy says little about honorific naming that is not related to financial contributions. For example, it does not provide more precise criteria for what kinds and levels of non-financial contributions might qualify for honorific naming, nor does it articulate guidelines or processes for proposing or considering individuals for honorific namings.
“This task force aims to help the university to consider more deeply who is valued on our campuses via honorific naming by clarifying the principles and processes that lead to new honorific namings,” Hass said.
Lewis added, “Because the act of naming buildings is not only a memorialization of a particular individual but also a statement about what and whose contributions have particularly mattered in our university’s history, the Inclusive History Project is proud to be convening this effort.”
The task force will work through this winter term to articulate principles and criteria for new honorific namings and to design a more open and transparent process for soliciting and considering nominations for honorific namings.
R Curtis Hamilton
Please consider removing B* Sch******ler’s name from the building on the athletic campus. His inaction on former university doctor Robert Anderson’s abuses is inexcusable.
Ren Farley
People Associated with the University of Michigan who might be commemorated
with the erection of historical markers on campus so that current employees,
students and visitors will be aware of their accomplishments.
Submitted by: Reynolds Farley
Otis Dudley Duncan Professor Emeritus
and Research Scientist at the Population Studies Center
January 15, 2024
Gerald Ford. He graduated in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in
economics and served as president of the USA. There may be no need for an
historical marker since the school of public policy bears his name.
Frank Murphy. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1914 with a law
degree. He eventually became a local judge in the city of Detroit. The most
famous civil rights litigation of the 1920s involved Dr. Ossian Sweet and his family –
African American. They bought and moved into a home in an all-white neighborhood
on Detroit’s east side. When the Sweet family moved in, rioting began and the
police entered the home then arrested and jailed Dr. Ossian Sweet and his
brother who had fired upon the crowd to prevent what he presumed would be a traditional racial lynching.
Frank Murphy was the presiding judge in Detroit. He exonerated Dr. Sweet and
his brother and strongly endorsed the principal that there was no legal basis in
Michigan allowing the exclusion of Blacks from White neighborhoods.
From 1930 to 1933, Murphy served as major of Detroit where he earned a reputation for
providing assistance to the many unemployed and impoverished residents of his
city during the Depression. In 1933 President Roosevelt appointed him to be the
governor general of our colony in the Pacific, the Philippines and he served for three years. From 1937 to 1939 he served as governor of Michigan. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in Washington and he served as an Associate Justice for a decade.
Jesse Owens. He was a student at Ohio State but on Tuesday afternoon May 21, 1935; he traveled to Ferry Field in Ann Arbor to participate in a track meet. In a 45-minute span that day he set five world records for running on a track and tied a sixth record. Nothing similar to this occurred before or since. In the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, he won
four gold medals. There is now a very small and humble commemoration of his
unique achievement at Ferry Field
Branch Rickey. He earned a bachelor’s degree while playing baseball at Ohio Wesleyan. He then attended the University of Michigan law school. While earning his legal
degree he applied for and got the job as baseball coach for the period 1910 to 1913.
Rickey went on to a very successful career as a management official in major league
baseball first in St. Lous and then in Brooklyn. He is most famous for recruiting the
first African American to play professional baseball in the Twentieth Century, that
is Jackie Robinson who began with the Montreal Royals in 1946 and then with the
major league Dodgers in 1947.
I have heard a story, but you will have to verify it with someone who has written
about the history of baseball on the Michigan campus. While coaching the
Wolverine team he scheduled a game against Notre Dame and took the team
to South Bend. He had one player who was an African American. When they
got to South Bend, the hotel official said that one black player could not
stay in the hotel. Supposedly, Rickey said that if that player could not stay
overnight, no one would stay there and promptly returned the team to Ann Arbor.
Amanda Sanford. In 1871 she became the first women to earn a degree from the
University of Michigan. It was in medicine.
Eero Saarinen. In 1923, this innovative and very creative architect migrated away from his native Finland and came to Detroit where he began his distinguished career. I have
read that he had contact either upon arrival in Detroit or shortly thereafter
with faculty at the University of Michigan, presumably in architecture and
engineering. I have no documentation but someone who has studied
the history of the architectural program here will know more about his possible
link to Michigan.
Madelon Stockwell. In 1870, the Regents decided to allow women to enter
and study at the University of Michigan. Madelon Stockwell was the first
women to become a Michigan student in that year.
Moses Fleetwood Walker. He was born to mixed race parents in Mount Pleasant, Ohio and attended Oberlin College where he starred as a catcher on the baseball team. In 1883, the University of Michigan recruited him to catch for their baseball team. While playing baseball at Michigan he earned a law degree. In 1884, he began playing professional baseball for the Toledo Blue Stocking of the American Association. At that time, that league was consider a major baseball league. The current American and National leagues date back to only 1901. Thus, many historians of baseball consider Moses Fleetwood Walker the first African American to play in the major leagues until Branch Rickey recruited Jackie
Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers 63 years later.
Samuel Codes Watson. He was, arguably, the first African American to attend the
University of Michigan. He was born in South Carolina in 1832 to mixed race
couples. Mulattos were quite common at that time. Watson enrolled in
Michigan in 1852 and apparently passed for White in Ann Arbor. He earned a
medical degree from a college in Cleveland and then practiced medicine in Detroit. He became the first African American to be elected to a county-wide office in Wayne County.