History

  1. April 17, 2023

    Heritage Project — Angell, China and opium

    During a grand dinner in 1910 celebrating James Burrill Angell’s nearly 40-year tenure as U-M’s president, Angell touted among his accomplishments the treaty he negotiated with China regarding opium.

  2. April 10, 2023

    Heritage Project — Such horrible business

    Early one morning just before Christmas 1857, men arriving for work on the construction of a church found heaps of fresh earth next to empty graves in a little graveyard.

  3. April 3, 2023

    Heritage Project — Professor Ford

    U-M knew Jerry Ford as a star football player, earning Most Valuable Player honors as a senior in 1934. But he had never stepped on campus bearing the title he did in the spring of 1977: Professor Gerald R. Ford.

  4. March 27, 2023

    Global museums initiative addressing 21st century challenges

    A group of natural history museums has mapped the total collections from 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums in 28 countries, including the collections from four U-M museums.

  5. March 27, 2023

    Heritage Project — The first women

    More than a half century after the first woman was admitted to U-M, the Alumnae Council of the U-M Alumni Association sent a questionnaire to every woman who had attended U-M to date.

  6. March 20, 2023

    Heritage Project — The first teach-in

    In 1965, only a handful of students were radical in their politics. But the faculty included a scattering of progressives involved in the early stirrings of dissent against the Vietnam War. 

  7. March 13, 2023

    Heritage Project — Me Too, circa 1970

    A movement of sorts began at Jean Ledwith King’s modest house on the far west side of Ann Arbor early in 1970 when King and a handful of other women asserted that U-M should treat women the same as men.

  8. March 6, 2023

    Heritage Project — ‘Our brilliant Miss Sheldon’

    On her 21st birthday — Sept. 15, 1871 — a drizzly day in upstate New York, Mary Downing Sheldon boarded the train in her hometown of Oswego, secured her luggage and settled into her seat.

  9. February 13, 2023

    Heritage Project — ‘The dignity of man’

    Thirty-five years after receiving his medical degree from Michigan in 1931, Paul Cornely called on schools of public health to better prepare their graduates for addressing the health challenges facing African Americans. 

  10. February 6, 2023

    Heritage Project — Rhapsodies in blue

    The origins of U-M’s devotion to the color blue lie lost in the years before the Civil War. But a committee of students charged with choosing Michigan’s colors made their recommendation Feb. 12, 1867.