History
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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December 20, 2021
The Tappan Oak: A tale of life, death, and rebirth
A remembrance of the Tappan Oak — removed in November due to severe trunk decay — and the enduring legacy of the iconic tree that had stood as a sentinel over the Diag throughout U-M’s history.
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December 6, 2021
Clements Library acquires rare hand-drawn 1761 map of Detroit
The William L. Clements Library has announced the acquisition of a previously unattainable map, “Plan of the Fort at De Troit,” which was drawn in 1761 during the French and Indian War.
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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.