Heritage Project
-
February 21, 2022
Heritage Project — ‘Lonely as Hell’
A white graduate student at U-M named John Behee explored how many Black athletes had played for U-M, and he found several of the 187 who lettered at U-M before 1972.
-
February 14, 2022
Heritage Project — The Negro-Caucasian Club
Lenoir Bertrice Smith, a Black student, and her white friend Edith Kaplan, along with Oakley Johnson, a young instructor, gathered friends and declared themselves the Negro-Caucasian Club of U-M in 1925.
-
February 7, 2022
Heritage Project — First in class
Orval Johnson was a Black student at a largely white university in 1948. Peter R. Elliott was the prototypical big man on campus, a member of two national championship teams.
-
January 31, 2022
Heritage Project — Birds in the library
Frustrated by the lack of action taken by a books and research equipment committee in 1838, Regent Zina Pitcher acted on his own to get the university’s first library going.
-
January 24, 2022
Heritage Project — Fraternity war
In the fall term of 1845, just four years after classes had begun at the University of Michigan, a junior named George Becker and several friends joined together to create U-M’s first fraternity.
-
January 17, 2022
Heritage Project — Just nuts
Through the years, the darting, chattering, pandering squirrels have been a happy diversion for U-M students, staff and faculty.
-
January 10, 2022
Heritage Project — The 1913 Lectern
For more than 100 years, Hill Auditorium has been U-M’s most prestigious venue for rhetoric and debate. Speaker after speaker has gripped and pounded an oak lectern given by the Class of 1913.
-
December 6, 2021
Heritage Project — The campus at war
In the days following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, U-M students — both male and female — had decisions to make regarding their response to the United States entering World War II.
-
November 22, 2021
Heritage Project — The assassin’s widow
Unable to speak much English but desiring to stay in the United States after her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed, Marina Oswald was invited to study at U-M’s English Language Institute.
-
November 15, 2021
Heritage Project — The law school goes under
The architectural crown of U-M’s campus was the Law Quadrangle, and the jewel in that crown was the Law Library. Architect Gunnar Birkerts figured the only way to add space and not interfere with the building’s beauty was to go down.
