History

  1. March 13, 2017

    The history of maize and blue

    In the late 1860s, a committee of U-M students charged with choosing the university’s colors recommended that “azure blue and maize” be adopted as the institution’s symbolic colors.

  2. February 20, 2017

    Tappan’s dismissal

    On June 25, 1863, the University of Michigan Board of Regents voted to remove the university’s first president, Henry Philip Tappan, from office.

  3. February 14, 2017

    LSA bicentennial talk to explore U-M during World War I, aftermath

    LSA’s third Bicentennial Theme Semester Symposium, which begins Friday, will explore the historical impact on U-M of World War I and its aftermath.

  4. February 13, 2017

    Targeting Tappan

    Although the University of Michigan’s first president earned the love of students and the respect of many faculty, Henry Philip Tappan also had his fair share of critics.

  5. February 6, 2017

    Charles Horton Cooley and the looking-glass self

    After graduating from U-M in 1887, Charles Horton Cooley earned a master’s degree in economics at U-M and started working at the Interstate Commerce Commission. Henry Carter Adams later hired Cooley to be an instructor in U-M’s economics department. 

  6. February 2, 2017

    Next LSA bicentennial symposium looks at U-M during Reconstruction

    The second LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester symposium, “1877: Reconstructing the University of Michigan,” kicks of Feb. 10 and will focus on a period when U-M began to assume its modern form. 

  7. January 30, 2017

    John Dewey and a new perspective

    When James Burrill Angell was president of the University of Vermont, he became friendly with the Dewey family. One of the family’s sons, John Dewey, showed such promise at the University of Vermont that Angell remembered him 15 years later, when he was searching for a philosophy instructor for U-M.

  8. January 23, 2017

    Between two paintings, years of growth

    A 1907 view of the U-M campus painted by Richard Rummell, an artist well-known for his “bird’s-eye” landscapes.

  9. January 16, 2017

    MLK keynote

    In 1989, California State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr. gave the opening address at Hill Auditorium as part of U-M’s celebrations honoring the great civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

  10. January 9, 2017

    President Angell’s birthday

    James Burrill Angell, the third U-M president, was born Jan. 7, 1829, in Rhode Island. Known as “Prexy” to students, he served as U-M’s president from 1871 to 1909.