AS WORLD WAR I RAGED, POET ANGELA MORGAN USED HER PEN TO ADVOCATE FOR PEACE. CHAMPIONED BY THE LIKES OF MARK TWAIN, SHE FOUND SUCCESS FOR A SHORT WHILE— THEN HARDSHIP. HER WORDS AND EXPERIENCES ENDURE IN HER ARCHIVED PAPERS.
Oh, our minds are numb and our hearts are sore! – They are killing the thing we cherish most, They are driving you forth in a blinding host, They are storming the world with your eager
“Creating adaptive structures for the future” was a theme of a new Architects’ Ball recently held by students at U-M’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Read how the original balls were started on p. 31.
4 The Great Ideals Marching Through Her
Her poetry found its way into the hands of Vanderbilts and Carnegies. For a time she was a lauded voice of social reform. Although her success didn’t last, Angela Morgan never regretted using her words to fight for change.
10 Up, Lad, Up
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, John Nakamura was drafted, then discharged because he was Japanese and considered a security threat. He reenlisted in 1943 and found himself on the front lines in Italy. His life’s path was altered, but his ideals never wavered.
16 Michigan’s Failed Anarchist Utopia
Struggling to find jobs during the Great Depression, a group of citizens banded together to create a self-sufficient community built around anarchistic principles of self-government. Their imagined ideal was both short-lived and conflict-prone.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
1 Closing the Distance
ABRIDGED
2 Select Bentley Bites
IN THE STACKS
22 Patriotism at Freeman Field
24 Could U-M have been in Ohio?
25 Frozen Out
26 Rescuing History
PROFILES
28 Equal Footing
29 “Go Forward and Shine Bright”
BENTLEY UNBOUND
30 “Trustworthy, Kindly, and Good”
31 Getting the Ball Rolling
Closing the Distance
How the Bentley is building relationships with those who are physically separated from documentation about their communities and cultures.
THE BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY is home to more than 150 collections documenting the history and culture of the Philippines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Joseph Beale Steere’s expeditions to the Philippines in 1874 and 1887 set the stage for the involvement of other U-M faculty, students, and alums in the American colonization of the Philippines in the 20th century. The papers of all these men, along with the papers of many of their colleagues who participated in the American colonial project in the Philippines, reside at the Bentley Historical Library, more than 8,000 miles from the individuals and communities they document.
For the past two summers, I and other members of the Bentley Library staff have traveled to the Philippines with the ReConnect/ReCollect project, led by U-M
professors Ricky Punzalan and Deirdre de la Cruz. Our goal has been to engage in reparative action and build relationships with archivists, librarians, scholars, and Indigenous communities who are physically separated from the documentation of their communities and cultures held at the Bentley.
On our travels this summer, we met with leaders of Philippine cultural agencies, the National Library, National Museum (including its regional museums on the islands of Cebu and Bohol), National Archives, and National Historic Commission as well as with archivists, curators, and scholars at Ateneo de Manila University and University of San Carlos. Many of our discussions centered on ways that the Bentley could collaborate with and support these institutions, including making Bentley Philippine collection materials more accessible via digitization.
At the National Library, we discovered that the Bentley has the only accessible copy of the Manuel Quezon papers. Quezon was the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines (1935–1944), and because of damage to his original papers, our microfilm copy is the most legible. To
(Left) Bentley archivists and members of the ReConnect/ ReCollect project view the papers of Manuel Quezon, the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines (1935–1944).
improve access for scholars in the Philippines, we are digitizing our microfilm to add to our digital collections and will provide digital copies to the National Library and the University of the Philippines.
As part of our commitment to this work, the Bentley is also sponsoring—in collaboration with Punzalan and the School of Information—Philippine scholars, librarians, and archivists for fully funded month-long visits. These visits will provide additional opportunities for access and will help us learn more about our collections and the needs of institutions and communities in the Philippines.
These visits have already helped us begin to determine which of our collections have the most important Philippine content and which we should prioritize for digitization.
We are at the very beginning of this work and are excited to continue conversations and exchanges with our colleagues in the Philippines. In the coming years, I look forward to sharing with you the tangible outcomes of these visits and conversations in the pages of this magazine.
Alexis Antracoli Director
17
Number of shades of black available from Venus Pencils “for perfect pencil work,” according to a 1921 ad in The Michigan Daily
UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SELFRIDGE FIELD, MICHIGAN
VOLTERRA, ITALY
Some of the locations visited in this issue of Collections magazine.
ARCHIVIST EMERITUS
Title awarded to the Bentley’s longtime athletics archivist Greg Kinney, who retired on June 14, 2024. The Regents awarded him emeritus status and noted that they “salute this distinguished faculty member.”
We do, too!
abridged
2,459
Number of visitors who have attended “Astro Nights” at the Detroit Observatory. These events are free and open to the public.
Learn more: myumi.ch/Rm57d
Store of Yore
Located in Ann Arbor at the corner of Main Street and Washington Street, the Bach & Abel Dry Goods Shop sold
lace, fabrics, and sewing materials. This photo was taken circa 1888. Don’t miss the oversized boot on the far right!
abridged
Escanaba in the Moonlight
This beautiful postcard of Escanaba’s Ludington Street, circa 1910, is from the Bentley’s historic postcard collection. The message on the back is written to Miss Dolly Bradley from “Evans” and says that he went to a dance on Friday and “raised the dickens so everybody thought I was drunk.”
LUCK OF THE DRAW
Spines, eyes, and hearts—oh my! In 1955, Gerald P. Hodge joined the University of Michigan and established a graduate program in medical and biological illustration. The Bentley houses this graduate program collection, which includes many of Hodge’s original drawings.
Discover this and more in the new book, Our Michigan, which draws heavily from Bentley collections to feature stories and images of people who shaped U-M. Learn more: myumi.ch/PkxNz
“Time flies, and so, nowadays, does the student!”
—Michigan Alumnus magazine, 1923. Two local planes offered students short rides through the skies above Ann Arbor so that they could go flying “over the church spires,” and “look down upon the dome of University Hall.”
University Hall
Old General Library
Anatomical Laboratory
Barbour Gymnasium
Buildings on campus that no longer exist. (University Hall pictured above.) The Bentley holds many early prints and photographs of these buildings, ensuring they don’t disappear entirely from memory.
he great idea ls marching through he r
As the United States e ntered World War I, Angela Morgan picked up her pen. Her poetry was deeply political, calling for peace and soc ial change. Her papers at the ßentley reveal a career that burned brightly for a short time and t he struggles she endured to change heart s and minds through th e written word.
Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, Fruit of our age-long mother pain, They have caught your life in the na- tions' mesh, They have bargained you out for their paltry gain And they build their hope on the shat- tered breast Of the child we sang to rest. On the shattered breast and the wounded cheek—O, God! If the mothers could only speak! Blossom of centuries trampled down For the moment’s red renown. Pulse of our pulse, breath of our breath, Hope of the pang that brought to birth, They have flung you forth to the fiends of death, They have cast your flesh to the cruel earth, Field upon field, tier upon tier Till the darkness writhes in fear. And they plan to marshal you more and more—Oh, our minds are numb and our hearts are sore!- They are killing the thing we cherish most, They are driving you forth in a blinding host. They are storming the world with your eager strength
Bone Fruit have
Several countries simply refused to let their delegates go. The ship taken by the American delegates, the Noordam, was halted in English waters and required political pressure from Jane Addams, the conference’s leader, to be allowed to pass. But even this wasn’t a guarantee of safety, since the wartime crossing from the United States to Europe was littered with floating mines and submarines skulking in the waters below.
Emperors! Kings! On your heedless throne,
Do you hear the cry that the mothers make?
The blood you shed is our own, our own, You shall answer, for our sake.
I
n
the
hands
When you pierce his side, you have pierced our side –O, mothers! The ages we have cried! –
of th e wom e n
PACKED INTO A LARGE CONFERENCE ROOM IN THE HAGUE, A POEM TITLED “THE BATTLE CRY OF THE MOTHERS” RUSTLED.
LOUISE CARNEGIE—A PHILANTHROPIST MARRIED TO INDUSTRIALIST ANDREW CARNEGIE—LOVED THIS POEM SO MUCH THAT SHE PAID TO PRINT 150,000 COPIES. IN 1915, THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE CALLED THE POEM “PEACE PROPAGANDA.” WORLD WAR I HAD STARTED JUST ONE YEAR BEFORE.
The author, Angela Morgan, stood onstage at The Hague, reading:
Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, fruit of our agelong mother pain, they have caught your life in the nations’ mesh, they have bargained you out for their paltry gain, and they build their hope on the shattered breast of the child we sang to rest. On the shattered breast and the wounded cheek—O God! If the mothers could only speak!
Morgan’s poem was a call for peace from the soldiers’ mothers, and it would quickly become the most famous poem that she ever wrote. On the main stage, behind a long table, massive, feathery palm leaves arched into the air above the leaders of the 1915 International Congress of Women, many of whom had struggled to even attend this conference. Belgian delegates had trouble getting passports.
All the women on the Noordam including Addams, Morgan, her friend Rebecca Shelley, U-M alum Alice Hamilton, and many others— risked their lives by traveling.
In the end, the conference produced a resolution with 20 points, outlining attendees’ ideas about how peace should be achieved.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote a widely publicized letter calling the women’s peace movement “base and silly,” denouncing them as “foolish.”
The war did not end that year, and, with the United States’ entry to the fight in 1917, public opinion would soon turn sharply against these women who had risked everything to advocate for peace.
To Strike
Splendor from the Core
At the beginning of her life, Morgan could not have imagined that she would end up on that stage, pleading for international peace.
Born Nina Lillian Morgan circa 1873, Morgan and her family embodied a national struggle. Her father, Colonel Albert Talmon Morgan, was a white man, while her mother, Carolyn Victoria Highgate, who taught at a Freedman’s Bureau “Sabbath School,” was multiracial.
Together, as an interracial couple in Yazoo City, Mississippi, they faced a community that was hostile to their very existence. An abolitionist, Albert described “the jeers, the scorn, and the blows of the enemy” that his family bore, in his book Yazoo; or, On the Picket Line of Freedom in the South.
Albert was elected sheriff, but his community was deeply divided. His political opponent, Francis P. Hilliard, refused to relinquish his office after Albert was elected, and gunfire erupted on both sides as part of the conflict.
At the end of it, Hilliard was dead.
Morgan’s father was accused of murder, despite the fact that witnesses saw Hilliard walking toward Albert at the time, and the wound
mesh, their hope Of Onthethe cheek— speak!down
For the our pulse, the flungpang They earth, Till Andthe more— our thinghearts They host. They eager
(Opening spread) Angela Morgan poses in a costume in an undated photo.
(This page, clockwise) A flier advertising the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague; a newspaper article cites the call for an “end to bloodshed” and mentions Morgan’s poem; more than 1,100 women attended in spite of travel challenges during WWI; President Theodore Roosevelt was among those critical of the women’s peace movement.
Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, Fruit of our age-long mother pain, They have caught your life in the nations' mesh, They have bargained you out for their paltry gain And they build their hope on the shattered breast the child we sang to rest. the shattered breast and the wounded cheek— O, God! If the mothers could only speak!- Blossom of centuries trampled down the moment's red renown. Pulse of pulse, breath of our breath, Hope of pang that brought to birth, They have flung you forth to the fiends of death, They have cast your flesh to the cruel earth, Field upon field, tier upon tier the darkness writhes in fear. they plan to marshal you more and more— Oh, our minds are numb and hearts are sore!- They are killing the thing we cherish most, They are driving you forth in a blinding host. They are storming the world with your eager strength—
was reportedly on the back of his head. Albert was jailed, then released, but community discontent grew.
The threat of lynching forced him to flee with his family to Washington, D.C.
Albert moved from position to position, haunted by the specter of perpetual debt, and he abandoned his wife and children to go gold prospecting in Colorado around the year 1890. His wife was left to fend for a hungry family.
To help earn money, Morgan and her sisters formed a singing troupe, known as the Angela Sisters, and echoed in her later pen name: “Angela Morgan.” Yet when she wrote about the struggles of her life, she did so often in a bracingly optimistic tone.
“Life bombards us human beings with every sort of experience, in order to strike splendor from the core,” she wrote in her draft autobiography, now archived in the Angela Morgan papers at the Bentley Library.
Spiritual Dynamite
From the beginning, Morgan desperately wanted to be a poet. “I do not remember a time when I was not writing, or craving to write,” she wrote in her autobiography.
But the stark reality was that becoming a poet by trade required free time and money, neither of which Morgan had.
So, she became a journalist, writing for newspapers like the Okolona Messenger, the New York Tribune, and the San Francisco Call, while writing poetry on the side. While reporting, she witnessed the depth of human suffering in impoverished areas, courts, and jails.
The empathy that Morgan had for the people she met is echoed in her poetry. Writing about a poor woman named Filippa, she pled with America’s wealthiest citizens:
You, whose yachts and whose motors, whose houses and lands, are bought by the labor of Filippa’s hands, do you know of a way that the body be fed, save by bread?
[ ] Do you dream she could thrive on the pittance you give? Speak! How is Filippa to live?
Morgan’s poetry and her desire for social reform were intertwined. In her autobiography, she wrote:
“I shall never rest till I write the kind of poem that has enough real spiritual dynamite in it to help make this world a better place to live in. I want to write something that will help to do away with war and poverty and misery. I want to feel that my poems enter the souls and hearts of people and actually help them in their daily living.”
As much as Morgan wanted to transform society into a more equitable and peaceful place, her writing was sometimes influenced by broader social ideas about gender that conflicted with her goals.
In a few poems, she wrote as if all women were homemakers, going against her own ideals of social reform. However, although she idealized the role of homemaker, she found that it wasn’t for her; after Morgan married a man named Peter Sweningson in 1900, she quickly separated from, then divorced, her husband.
She also believed women should have a voice in government, and the freedom to pursue their own careers.
Despite her prolific output, it was a struggle to get her poetry heard.
“Everybody recognizes man’s right to put his work first, whereas the girl’s or the woman’s right is constantly questioned,” she wrote.
In the end, she became her own advocate. She acted as her own secretary, kept her calendar and meticulous notes of correspondence, and sent out her poems to others to read.
It was one of those letters that led to Morgan sitting in Mark Twain’s parlor.
The Great Ideals
According to an article by Edith Davies in the magazine Progress, archived in the Angela Morgan papers, Twain invited Morgan to speak with him after receiving one of her poems in the mail. He was moved by the poem, and sent it to Collier’s, a popular magazine, “with a personal note.”
It was accepted for publication. Morgan had her first real champion.
She also found a patron in philanthropist and socialite Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, who in 1914 funded Morgan’s first book of poetry, The Hour Has Struck. This gave Morgan the freedom to quit journalism and focus on verse.
She described writing poetry as an overwhelming experience.
“The terrible injustice of war overpowered me and drove deep into my very soul,” she wrote. “One day it seemed to me it was like a sword in my heart and I was ready to weep with the suffering of the world. That night, sitting up very late after my mother had gone to bed and the teacher had retired, the whole poem came swinging into consciousness.”
“I shall never rest till I write the kind of poem that has enough real spiritual dynamite in it to help make this world a better place to live in.”
She wrote until three in the morning. Then, she sent the poem, “The Battle Cry of the Mothers,” to her patron, who showed it to Louise Carnegie.
“I received from Emily [Vanderbilt Sloane] a rapturous letter informing me that Mrs. Andrew Carnegie was so impressed by these verses that she would purchase them, have them printed, and distributed by the thousands,” Morgan recorded.
The floodgates opened. Suddenly, Morgan’s poetry was in demand; newspapers and magazines were asking for her work. At last, she could share “the great ideals that were marching through” her.
Who gates He is cloud-borne Whose have Like through They their With they Who known. He is time-crowned erhood, By the Marathon, By andRaymond, Lion Whose ried His throughname hall
stand at the gates of dawn. is known to the cloud-borne company
(Top and bottom) Morgan’s collection contains numerous undated portraits and photographs, including an autographed image that reflects the height of her popularity as a public figure.
Whose souls but late have gone. wind-flung stars through lattice bars They throng to greet their own, With voice of flame sound his name Who died to us unknown. is hailed by
He Is Not Unknown
Now a professional poet, Morgan produced a flurry of work, beginning with a book titled Utterance, and Other Poems. She continued writing about peace, acting as a voice of empathy for working women, people in poverty, soldiers, and the families that suffered their loss.
In 1921, when the “Unknown Soldier” was brought home from Europe to the United States, where his tomb was constructed, it was Angela Morgan’s poem that was read over his coffin as he lay in the Capitol rotunda:
He is known to the cloud-borne company, whose souls but late have gone. Like wind-flung stars through lattice bars, they throng to greet their own; with voice of flame they sound his name, who died to us unknown.
Morgan’s words were a reminder that this soldier, at some point in his life, was named and loved.
This poem was widely published in newspapers such as the Bismarck Tribune, which included above it, in all capital letters: “HE IS NOT UNKNOWN.”
See Us As We Are
The support of Morgan’s wealthy patrons, ladies she imagined living in “fairyland,” did not last. Supporting first her mother, then father, and at least one sister in a sanatorium, Morgan found herself in the grips of poverty once more, struggling to keep herself and her family fed.
She begged the rich ladies who had so loved her poetry during the war to buy a few copies of her books for their libraries. They refused.
the time-crowned broth-
erhood, the
Dauntless of Marathon,Raymond, Godfrey
Lion Heart
Whose dreams he caron. name they call through the heavenly
“If I once began giving books to the Carnegie libraries, I should open such a floodgate that there would be no end,” Louise Carnegie wrote to Emily Vanderbilt Sloane in 1924. Fairyland had run dry.
Morgan’s financial struggles would fill the rest of her life, until finally the famous “poetess” declared bankruptcy in 1935.
But she wrote that she did not regret writing her poems, despite all her struggles—and despite the towering stature they seemed to create in the minds of her readers.
“Oh dear,” one of her readers reportedly told her, “I’ve been reading your poetry with such deep reverence, supposing you to be an awesome individual, and here you are just a human being like everybody else.”
Morgan wrote: “Again and again I have been confronted with questions of this sort from women whose preconceived idea of me almost demanded that I should look the part of a prophetess or priestess.” Morgan herself was fascinated by spiritualism and religion, but she remained very much a human being.
According to The New York Times, Angela Morgan died “after a long sickness” in 1957 at the New York home of friends Mr. and Mrs. Warren Meyer, who helped care for her in the years leading up to her death.
Many of Morgan’s papers languished in a warehouse in Philadelphia, from which they were rescued by her friend and fellow pacifist, U-M alum Rebecca Shelley. Shelley brought them to Battle Creek, Michigan, then to the Bentley Historical Library, to be preserved.
The Angela Morgan papers at the Bentley include 61 boxes full of poems, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, diaries, speeches, newspaper clippings, and more, and are open to the public.
UP,LAD, UP
Japanese American soldiers like John Nakamura comprised the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which trained at the Army’s Camp Shelby in Mississippi.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN NAKAMURA
John Nakamura was a smart, conscientious U-M student hoping becometoa journalist. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the United States entered World War II. Archived papers at the Bentley tell the story of how Nakamura’s path was altered, but never his heart.
By Kim Clarke
AS A JOURNALISM STUDENT AT FLINT CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, JOHN NAKAMURA FACED A DAUNTING ASSIGN-
MENT: WRITE YOUR OWN OBITUARY.
He was just a teenager, so what to say? He had loving parents, four brothers, and a sister. Together, they were the city’s first Japanese American family, living in a two-story house his immigrant father had designed. He loved to read and dance. He played the trumpet and was known to perform “Taps” on Armistice Day. Johnny Nakamura closed his obituary with a two-word epitaph he imagined for his headstone: “I? Why?”
As papers at the Bentley Historical Library reveal, he would provide many answers in the years ahead.
A SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY
Nakamura enrolled at U-M in 1940 after earning an associate’s degree at Flint Junior College. He settled into Congress House, a student cooperative on Tappan Avenue, a few blocks south of the Law Quad. Co-op living was a draw because of the cheap rent and rich camaraderie. Students filled the house with used furniture, dented pots and pans, and battered utensils. Everyone pitched in—shopping, cleaning, cooking, partying—to keep down costs.
“Living in the co-ops I won’t be troubled by the question of expenses that can really upset a student’s life by worry and anxiety,” he told his parents.
A spirit of democracy and tolerance infused the place, and Nakamura was at the heart of it. Everyone saw him as gracious, cheerful, and calm. He was the first
Soldiers with the 442nd Regiment wore a shoulder patch bearing the torch of liberty.
to welcome a new resident. As house steward, he managed the kitchen and made up the menus; he enjoyed cooking for 40 men and saw it as an opportunity rather than a chore. An English major, Nakamura invited the acclaimed poet W.H. Auden, a visiting faculty member, to come for Sunday dinner. He loved playing Artie Shaw records and never hesitated to drop the needle on his favorite, “Back Bay Shuffle.”
Nakamura was an early riser and always roused his roommate, Orval G. Johnson, in time for breakfast. “John did not yell nor did he shake me, but instead provided the most civil of wake-up calls: He recited poetry to me,” Johnson said. A favorite poem was A.E. Housman’s “Reveille” with Nakamura quietly urging, “Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying.”
Everything changed with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and America’s entry into World War II.
Housemates dropped out to enlist. Whenever a newspaper published a horrible political cartoon misrepresenting Japanese people, Nakamura showed it to everyone—he wanted them to know how upsetting it was to him and his family. In Flint, Nakamura’s father, a native of Japan, was laid off from his design job at Chevrolet after the automaker took on war work and considered him a security threat.
U-M offered an accelerated wartime study program, and Nakamura graduated in the summer of 1942. He was 21 years old and wanted to be a journalist. The U.S. Army had other plans.
“THE
HARDEST WORK I’VE EVER DONE”
The Army drafted Nakamura that September and taught him to handle a rifle. Two months later, officers realized they were training a Japanese American soldier and discharged Nakamura, classifying him as an “enemy alien.” American-born children of Japanese immigrants had been banned from the military earlier that year.
Back in Ann Arbor, Nakamura set out to prove his patriotism. He tried to enroll in an Army Japanese Language School on campus but did not speak Japanese. The university denied his enrollment in a military mapmaking course. He traveled to Washington to ask his elected leaders to
get him back into the military. Nothing worked, until the Army announced in February 1943 that it would accept Japanese American soldiers.
Nakamura wasted no time enlisting. The Army assigned him to a segregated, all-Japanese unit, the 442nd Combat Regiment Team, and by spring 1944 he was fighting German soldiers in Italy and earning the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. “The badge represents the hardest work I’ve ever done,” he wrote to his family, “but with more of it, let us hope we will all rest easier by the end of the year.”
Waiting for him at home were his parents, William and Elsie; older brother Joseph, who had graduated from Michigan in 1940; siblings Frank, Mary, and Richard, all at U-M; and the youngest, William, who was in junior high.
He shared the beauty of what he saw in northern Italy. He swam in the Ligurian Sea, marveling at the buoyancy of saltwater. He picked fresh fruit to slake his thirst. “We enjoy fresh figs right off the tree— delicious—pears, peaches, plums, all sorts and grades of wine.”
During a break in the fighting, he and a buddy visited the ancient town of Volterra and its many alabaster shops, admiring the work of stonemasons, who made lamp bases, ashtrays, bookends, animal figurines. He befriended one artisan, bringing him chocolate, cigarettes, canned milk, and other items no longer found in local shops. In turn, the craftsman invited Nakamura to his home to enjoy home-cooked meals and moments of family life with his wife and daughters in the Tuscan hills.
“We had some very good times. Sang together, explained our
languages to each other, customs. Some American songs have Italian words and we would sing the English words while they sang Italian,” Nakamura wrote. “Mama Rosa and Papa used to say, ‘Your parents would be very glad if they could see you here.’”
He shipped home a tiny elephant figurine carved by his Italian friend and asked his parents to keep it for his return. The artisan’s wife cried when Nakamura said it was time for him to move on.
A GENTLEMAN, A ROMANTIC, A PHILOSOPHER
There was more combat, this time in France, and it was particularly vicious. Nakamura and his company moved from village to village, house to house, killing German soldiers and suffering high casualties themselves. By December 1944, they were exhausted.
On Christmas Eve, Nakamura and a buddy, Staff Sergeant Hideo “Lefty” Kuniyoshi, found themselves in an unfamiliar town along the border of Italy and France. The two soldiers had known each other since boot camp. Kuniyoshi called his friend “the intellectual in our squad,” always pushing for discussions about current affairs. With an overnight pass and Christmas just hours away, Nakamura wanted to have dinner somewhere, and wanted female companionship.
Kuniyoshi cautioned that any women on the streets were prostitutes.
“That’s okay,” Nakamura told his friend. “I’ll explain to them that we don’t have any intention of soliciting and that we just want to celebrate Christmas Eve dinner with two young ladies.” He successfully invited two women to join them for a quiet meal at a restaurant, with Nakamura speaking what little French he remembered from high school classes.
“We thoroughly enjoyed their company, and I guess they were happy that we treated them with respect and courtesy,” Kuniyoshi recalled. “After dinner we bid
them goodnight and wished them a Merry Christmas.”
He added: “John was a gentleman, an incurable romantic, and a philosopher.”
A SHARE OF THE FIGHTING
John Nakamura was also fatigued. “Home seems neither near or far away,” he wrote in early 1945. “It’s all something like a dream in which time is lost before it is even noticed to be passing.” He realized he had missed his own birthday.
“Infantry is hard; it doesn’t make one any younger. Twenty-four years and not yet settled,” he told his parents. “One must live some sort of life and I could never be at ease if I hadn’t gone to take my share of this fighting.” He said he wanted to stay in France after the war—“study French and literature and other things that interest me”—despite no job prospects.
TRIBUTE TO A FALLEN SOLDIER
In 1948, the U-M campus was settling into a post-war rhythm. University leaders announced the Phoenix Project, a research memorial to U-M’s war dead that would develop peaceful uses of atomic power after the destruction unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Enrollment was higher than ever, with veterans using GI Bill benefits to crowd into classrooms.
On South State Street, the Inter-Cooperative Council prepared to open the newest cooperative house in 16 years of student-owned housing at U-M. Plans for the former boarding house called for 20 rooms for 70 young men committed to the ideals of democracy and interracial living. It would be called Nakamura House, to honor a passionate supporter of co-op life. William Nakamura, the youngest brother of John, later became a resident and the last of six Nakamura siblings to attend U-M.
A REMEMBRANCE, JOHN M. NAKAMURA, JANUARY 16, 1921–APRIL 5, 1945 ; NAKAMURA ALUMNI FILE
(Above) John Nakamura’s alumni file includes news of his death and the purchase of a co-op house that would carry his name.
(Left) Nakamura’s siblings created a biography of their fallen brother, filled with family snapshots, campus memories, and photos from his Army service. The family presented the booklet to the Intercooperative Council on the 50th anniversary of John’s death.
“That doesn’t seem important as long as I can find a truly satisfactory life,” he said.
In April, Nakamura and the 442nd returned to Italy for the Allies’ final push against Germany. The terrain was more of an enemy than the Nazis. Soldiers moved at night, scaling mountain ridges as a human chain, each grasping the rucksack of the man ahead of him; some men crawled on their hands and knees to avoid falling. On the eve of the campaign, Nakamura confided to a sergeant that he expected to die the next day. The sergeant offered to take him off the front line, but Nakamura refused.
The following day, in heavy fighting, a barrage of German mortars and howitzers killed Pfc. John Michio Nakamura. A month later, the war in Europe was over.
Three months after Nakamura House opened, the American government moved the body of John Nakamura from Italy to the United States. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery at the request of his parents. The headstone he had tried to imagine in high school was cut from white Vermont granite.
Decades later, friends and family paid tribute to the fallen soldier in a privately published book, A remembrance, John M. Nakamura, January 16, 1921–April 5, 1945, held at the Bentley. Orval Johnson remembered his U-M roommate “as one who had a clear picture of the kind of world he strove for; it would be orderly, caring, healthful, challenging, and benign. In his genteel way he would do his best to create such a world.”
Johnson mentioned the final stanza of the poem that Nakamura often recited: Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover; Breath’s a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey’s over There’ll be time enough to sleep.
Bentley sources used in this story include the privately published book A remembrance, John M. Nakamura, January 16, 1921–April 5, 1945, and the Inter-Cooperative Council records.
I
In the FALL OF 1932,
JOSEPH JACOB COHEN EMBARKED ON A CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR TO document the devastating effects of the Great Depression on America’s workers. Born in Russia, Cohen had immigrated to the United States in 1903 and was soon deeply involved in America’s Jewish anarchist community. Eventually, he became the editor of the most influential Yiddish anarchist newspaper in the country, Fraye Arbeter Shtime (Free Voice of Labor). His tour, he hoped, would give him the opportunity to share his beliefs, drawing converts to anarchism and increasing subscriptions to his paper.
Instead, the destitution and despair Cohen saw on his journey reignited his long-held desire to create a self-sufficient community built around anarchistic principles of self-government. Soon, he was working with a group of like-minded Jewish anarchists to locate a suitable farm for their “colony.” One member of the group, Eli Greenblatt of Detroit, discovered what seemed like the perfect location near Michigan’s “Thumb,” nine miles southwest of the city of Saginaw.
The land was beautiful—as was Cohen’s vision for a communal utopia. But as records and a new oral history captured by the Bentley reveal, the community that would become Sunrise Cooperative Farm would be both joyous and short-lived, eventually torn apart by dissension and infighting.
DREAMING OF A NEW WORLD
The 10,000-acre Prairie Farm was once said to be the largest farm east of the Mississippi, producing sugar beets, peppermint, corn, and rye, as well as herds of horses and sheep. Created in the 1880s amid the prairie marshes around Saginaw, the farm’s success was due to miles of dikes and drainage ditches that spared it from the area’s frequent flooding. Nevertheless, by the 1920s it had fallen into disuse, and was eventually put up for sale.
After a wave of frantic fundraising, Cohen, Greenblatt, and several others formed a corporation to purchase Prairie Farm in March 1933. For $205,000, it became the property of the Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community—the official name for their new utopia. Contemplating its future, Cohen was exuberant, declaring that they were “building a new world, a heaven on earth, a kingdom of justice
for all who would join and do their share.” Their next task was recruiting “liberal minded people who [would] agree to live collectively and promise not to bring in fanaticism of any kind nor dogmatism.”
Advertisements were published in Yiddish and English anarchist newspapers in New York, Detroit, and Chicago. To join, applicants had to be younger than 45, meet with a preliminary screening committee, pass a health examina tion, and pay a nonrefundable entrance fee of $500. Although theoretically anyone who met these conditions could join, most colonists were Jewish, and many had an immigrant background. There was considerable enthusiasm for the proj ect and, by the fall of 1933, 85 families, or a total of around 250 people, had joined Sunrise.
FIGURING HOW TO FARM
The new colony envisaged by its founders would be avowedly anarchistic; they rejected any coercive structure, instead relying on members’ “natural” inclination for mutual aid as incentive for participat ing in communal work. On the farm, adult colonists were divided into a dozen or so teams based on their experience and interests. Each team was responsible for handling a different aspect of the farm, such as the sugar beet or dairy units. Other groups handled main tenance, cooking, and education.
Few of the colonists, however, had any real experi ence with farming, which led to considerable difficul ties. One memorable incident involved Sunrise’s 3,400 sheep. When the hired shepherd took a vacation, the colonists were confident they could manage things. The sheep promptly wandered off and weren’t located until the shepherd’s return.
One of the few who did have experience farming was Philip Truppin. In 2023, the Bentley recorded an oral history with Truppin’s daughter, Merelyn Dolins, who spent her childhood at Sunrise and shared her memories of her father and her experiences there.
As a teenager, Truppin graduated from a “Farm School” in New York, created to prepare students for life on a kibbutz, but instead he pursued a Ph.D. at New York University. At Sunrise, his farm school experience placed him in charge of the barns and the dairy herd whose milk and butter provided one of the few consistent sources of revenue on the farm.
In addition to their lack of experience, Dolins recalled another challenge facing the new farmers: slackers. Sunrise’s founding assumption was that people, freed from capitalist society, would naturally want to work together for the benefit of all. This proved true for most, but there also emerged a small but demoralizing group who refused to work.
(Top) Applications to Sunrise asked directly about farm experience, and the organization kept notes about potential members’ fitness and occupation.
(Bottom) Joseph Jacob Cohen’s book about the Sunrise Farm Cooperative, In Quest of Heaven, includes photos of the landscape and members at work.
Some believed anarchism meant complete freedom to choose what they did. Others claimed that debates over political and social issues took precedence over everything and harangued from the back of a truck those who worked in the fields. As firm believers in free choice, there was little the other colonists could do to curtail such behavior.
TO LABOR FOR NOTHING
Cohen and the other founders had hoped that a spirit of cooperation would prevail, but even as the first families settled on the farm, fierce debates erupted over a host of issues. One of the loudest among the predominantly Jewish colonists was whether public meetings and the newsletter should be in Yiddish or English.
Dolins remembers “walking up and down in front of the building while they were arguing about the newsletter, and I couldn’t even figure out why they were fighting about this.” The debate lasted weeks. And while English was eventually chosen, hard feelings carried over into the much more complex discussions about creating an organizing administration for the colony—an effort that was never successful.
(Top) The Joseph A. Labadie Collection at U-M contains additional material about Sunrise, including newsletters, newspaper clippings, and organizational documents.
(Bottom) Cohen wrote a letter to Albert Einstein in 1934, inviting him to a one-year celebration. Einstein’s reply says: Honored Sir! I was extremely interested in your letter. Taking refuge in the earth is indeed the best form of self-help in this time of economic upheaval. I wish your settlement every success and your little celebration a happy outcome.
Kind regards, Albert Einstein
Factions swiftly emerged spanning a dozen political views, including anarchists, socialists, Marxist Communists, Trotskyite Communists, Yiddishists, and some not “politically minded” at all. All, however, shared the belief that anyone from a different faction than their own was plotting a “dictatorship” and mismanaging the colony’s funds.
Cohen and Greenblatt were soon deeply at odds with colony members, and the latter abandoned the farm in disgust after only a few months.
Greenblatt was the first of a steady exodus of disgruntled members. Some even published articles condemning Sunrise in various anarchist papers, with one decrying that “Sunrise does not want to be built upon one’s own labor, but upon exploitation in all its forms . . . [luring ] Comrades to labor for nothing.”
A PRETTY NICE PLACE
Despite the factionalism, there was a great love for Sunrise shared by most colonists, according to Cohen’s memoirs, spurred by the sense of contributing to something greater than
oneself. Dolins agrees, remembering how life at Sunrise was full of joy—particularly for the children.
Education was an emphasis, and some of the first buildings erected were a primary school and a high school, also overseen by Truppin, who had been high school principal in North Dakota. Older children lived in a communal “children’s home,” and joined in the farm work between classes.
Educational opportunities also abounded for adults, with evening classes on everything from history to economics to animal husbandry. Playwrights, educators, activists, and social scientists from outside the farm frequently visited. There were weekly concerts, plays, and talent shows organized by the colonists. There was “singing all the time. There was constant singing,” Dolins recalls. And she particularly remembers the grand celebrations held every June to celebrate the anniversary of the farm’s purchase.
Eleven-year-old Melvin Weinstock captured colonists’ affection for the farm in his 1936 poem “Sunrise,” published in the school newsletter:
Sunrise is a pretty nice place, Of bosses there is not a trace, We all like it a lot, I think… I like to stay, I like to stay, I wonder how I can go away.
That would be a dreadful thing. Not to hear the birdies sing I surely would hate to leave Sunrise, Even though there are mosquitoes and flies.
ENDINGS AND LEGACIES
Yet by the time Weinstock penned his poem, Sunrise Farm was on the brink of disintegration. Financial difficulties were made worse by dwindling numbers of colonists who left out of frustration or to seek work in the cities slowly recovering from the Depression. A lawsuit filed by a former member in May 1936 accusing the colony’s leadership of fraud was eventually dismissed, but demanded precious time and funds to fight. An effort to sell the farm to the Department of Agriculture in return for support to maintain the colony as a “cooperative community” fell through—but the sale did not. On December 7, 1936, Sunrise Farm was sold to the federal government. Cohen, Truppin, and a dozen other families tried to continue their dream by moving to another farm in Virginia in early 1937. But the same problems from Sunrise appeared again and the breakdown of the friendship between Cohen and Truppin was the final straw. The last family left the new farm in 1940.
“There were a lot of negative things that happened . . . all the arguments and the difficulties it went through But I think it also had a lot of idealism,” Dolins recalls. Despite its brief existence, Sunrise left a deep impression on nearly all its residents. This was particularly true for the children, according to Dolins, many of whom went on to become educators and advocates for social justice, keeping Cohen’s dream of building “a kingdom of justice for all” alive.
Merelyn Dolins’s oral history and the Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community records are open to the public.
Patriotism at Freeman Field
In 1945, an officer-led protest on Indiana’s Freeman Field paved the way for racial desegregation in the military.
By Sarah Derouin
IN MARCH 1945, WARDELL POLK ARRIVED at Freeman Field Air Force Base in Seymour, Indiana, where tensions were running high.
Polk was part of the 477th Bombardment Group, an all-Black unit training for combat in World War II. Polk and the four squadrons of Black men now outnumbered the white men on the base.
Segregation in the military was policy and practice, leading Colonel Robert Selway, the white commander of the 477th, to create two clubs—one for “supervisory personnel or instructors” and another for “trainees.” Selway then designated all Black officers as “trainees,” including fighter pilots, experienced navigators, bombardiers, and triply qualified officers.
After years of hostile treatment, inadequate training, and openly racist policies
from the Army Air Forces (AAF), the Black officers of the 477th reached their limit. On April 5 and 6, 1945, multiple groups of African American officers attempted to enter the supervisory club—Polk among them.
Sixty-one Black officers were arrested. This act of civil disobedience kickstarted a series of civil rights actions from Black officers. Polk’s papers at the Bentley detail his experiences as a member of the 477th, his time at Freeman Field, and his enduring commitment to the U.S. military, even after years of racial discrimination.
THE RISE OF CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE MILITARY
Polk was born in 1918 and grew up in Black Bottom, a neighborhood on the lower east side of Detroit.
He was 23 when, in May 1941, the AAF began training hundreds of Black cadets at Tuskegee Army Airfield to become pilots, navigators, bombardiers, and gunners. These soldiers joined the all-Black 477th Bombardment Group in 1944 and were put under the command of Colonel Selway. To become a bombardier, enlistees had to
complete a rigorous, weeks-long training cycle. Polk completed this training, and on February 25, 1944, he was awarded the rank of Second Lieutenant.
The 477th originally trained at Selfridge Field, Michigan. Selway’s superior was Major General Frank O. Hunter, a decorated ace fighter pilot in WWI and a staunch racist. With Hunter’s support, Selway worked to prevent African Americans from being promoted and supported; the 477th was moved around the country to various airfields, likely in an attempt to break morale. In early 1945, the 477th finally settled at Freeman Field.
Their arrival made waves, both on and off the base. Polk was one of 400 Black officers and 2,500 enlisted men stationed at Freeman Field—drastically outnumbering the 250 white officers and 600 enlisted men already stationed there. Local townspeople in nearby Seymour, Indiana, showed open contempt toward the Black soldiers. On base, white officers freely expressed their racism, some eagerly looking for any excuse to incite violence.
REACHING THEIR LIMIT
Guided by a lieutenant who had labor organizer experience—Coleman Young, a future mayor of Detroit—they planned their “mutiny.” Over two nights in April, every 30 minutes or so, three Black officers would try to enter the white club. “We were gonna scatter, play pool, get a drink, buy cigarettes,” recalled Young in Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II by J. Todd Moye (Oxford University Press 2012). “The commanding officer was livid and placed us under arrest, at quarters.”
After the arrests, 110 officers wrote to the Army Inspector General, requesting an investigation. They noted the arrests showed hypocrisy and racial discrimination, stating, “The continuance of this policy can hardly be reconciled with the worldwide struggle for freedom for which we are asked, and are willing, to lay down our lives.”
In response, all but three officers—who were accused of pushing their way into the club—were released. But the disobedience outraged Selway. He quickly came up
with strategies to bar Black officers from the club, including Base Regulation 85-2, which outlined strict segregation on military installations. All officers had to read and sign the document saying they understood the regulation and that refusal to obey a direct order would result in punishment up to death.
Of the 422 Black officers in the 477th, 101 refused to sign and were arrested—Polk among them. Polk and his fellow officers were sent to Godman Field in Kentucky for confinement.
Archived in Polk’s collection is a handwritten letter from his confinement requesting legal representation by lawyer and civil rights icon William H. Hastie. There is no documented response from Hastie, but that might be because news of the protest and subsequent arrests soon spread to the press. After additional pressure from Congress, labor groups, and the NAACP, the 101 Black officers were released seven days after arriving at Godman.
(Left) Tuskegee airmen huddle for a briefing in 1943.
Even after their release, the officers received an official reprimand. The reprimand, archived in Polk’s papers, states, “. you displayed a stubborn and uncooperative attitude This action on your part indicated that you lack appreciation of the high standards of teamwork . . .” The reprimand went in their permanent records and was designed to hamper future military promotions and civil opportunities.
Each of the arrested officers wrote a defiant, identically worded response, doubling down on the racist regulation and treatment. “The cited regulation appeared and still appears to be a ‘Jim Crow’ regulation . . . ”
The response ended in a powerful declaration of each officer’s “unshakable belief that racial biases [are] Fascistic, un-American, and directly contrary to the ideals for which he is willing to fight and die.”
IN RECOGNITION
(Below) Wardell Polk’s disciplinary letter accuses him of a “stubborn and uncooperative attitude” and “regrettable actions.”
Selway was relieved of his position in late April 1945 and was replaced by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis. Davis immediately ended the promotional backlog for Black officers in the 477th. A review of discriminatory policies was conducted throughout the military in the following years, eventually leading President Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948 abolishing discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin” in the Armed Services.
After being separated from active duty, Polk tried to be reinstated to service. On September 1, 1947—a year and a half after his initial request—he reported for duty to Lockbourne Air Base.
In 2005, 60 years after the Freeman Field Mutiny, Michigan Senator Carl Levin introduced legislation to award the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their war efforts and help in breaking down racial stereotypes. Polk died in Detroit in 2002, but his name was still read by Senator Levin, who listed all 150 airmen from Michigan.
In 2006, the surviving Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, which featured an officer, mechanic, and pilot in profile.
The Bentley also has the papers of Tuskegee airmen Chauncey Spencer and Alexander Jefferson, and the Robert Fletcher Visual Materials include an interview with three Tuskegee Airmen.
Could U-M have been in Ohio?
Bentley historian Andrew Rutledge investigates an Ohio historical marker that claims U-M was once destined to be in the Buckeye State.
By Andrew Rutledge
THE AREA ALONG THE MICHIGAN-OHIO BORDER was once hotly contested between the two states, and a war was nearly fought over it in 1835. And it’s in this contested stretch where the University of Michigan’s campus was first going to be built—or, at least that’s what one historical marker in Toledo, Ohio, claims. But is it true?
“One of Toledo’s oldest neighborhoods and originally in Michigan, Huron St. Village was considered as the site of the University of Michigan,” reads the marker. But “after the outcome of the Michigan-Toledo War of 1835, the area was permanently established in Ohio and averted the proposed location of the university from here.”
During the Toledo War, Ohioans and Michiganders came to blows over the strip of land along the Maumee River where Toledo now stands. Eventually, Congress intervened, and Michigan only became a state after surrendering all claims to the area. But there are no records suggesting U-M ever considered basing itself in Toledo. So how did this marker come to exist?
The answer lies in U-M’s many connections with Toledo and its nearby lands. In September 1817, as part of the Treaty of Fort Meigs, negotiated just upstream from Toledo, members of the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Bodewadomi tribes granted six sections of land to the Catholic Church in Detroit and “to the corporation of the college at Detroit” founded just weeks before. The college would become the University of Michigan and the sale of those lands was key in keeping its doors open during its early years.
The lands along the Maumee River, however, had historically been a home to the Miami, Wyandot, and Anishinaabe peoples who were forced from the area by coercive treaties in the early 19th century. In late 1816, these lands were opened for sale to American citizens. A decade later, Congress passed a law setting aside “a quantity of land, not exceeding two entire townships” in Michigan territory “for the use and support of the University.” Desperate for funds, the Trustees who oversaw U-M’s operations, quickly appointed a committee to select these lands—not to build on them, but to claim them, then sell them for profit.
On June 25, 1827, the Trustees voted to claim Lots 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on Swan Creek in what is now downtown Toledo as part of those granted by Congress. Together they totaled 915.55 acres.
Former Cincinnati Mayor Martin Baum and his partner William Oliver had invested deeply in the Toledo area and eagerly sought
to buy these lots. But negotiations dragged and the Trustees only accepted their offer of $5,000 for Lots 1 and 2 in 1834. By then, however, the controversy over the Toledo Strip was in full force and the area’s legal status uncertain.
When Congress forced Michigan to cede control of Toledo to Ohio, it took a special Act of Congress in 1837 to allow the Trustees to sell lands that were now outside of the state. The remaining lots continued to be University property into the 1850s.
In late 2023, Brian Miller, records manager for the engineering department of Lucas County, Ohio, was looking through archived township documents and discovered a map showing U-M’s lands in Toledo. Dating from 1904, it was an exact copy of an administrative map to manage land transactions from the early 1800s. Miller shared scans of the map with the Bentley, which, when combined with the early University records already in the archive, revealed a little-known history of U-M’s connections with Toledo.
Those connections likely mixed with the Toledo War in popular memory, forming the belief U-M was once destined to be in Ohio.
A recently rediscovered map from 1904 verifies that U-M Trustees had sold land in Ohio for profit but never intended to move the campus there.
BRIAN MILLER
Frozen Out
Forgotten start dates.
Varsity status denials. Archived records show how the U-M women’s ice hockey team has repeatedly been iced out.
By Madeleine Bradford
WATER POURED ACROSS PALMER FIELD, swirling through the grass. Soon, this flooded field would be transformed into a gleaming sheet of ice.
“Part of Palmer Field is to be turned into a skating rink free to everybody as long as skating lasts, and college women will have an opportunity to learn the hitherto unknown mysteries of ice hockey,” The Michigan Daily announced in 1916.
This was one of the first mentions of women’s ice hockey in U-M’s history. It wouldn’t be the last.
The first U-M women’s ice hockey team started as early as 1933, continuing through 1934, first under the direction of men’s varsity hockey coach Eddie Lowrey, then under varsity co-captains John Sherf and John Jewell. The student-run Women’s Athletic Association (WAA) at U-M took over
leadership of women’s ice hockey until 1936, according to archived WAA report books.
Women playing sports at U-M had to earn a certain number of points to be granted a women’s-only Block M from WAA, and the points system was expanded in the mid1930s to include ice hockey. (Women’s letter jackets couldn’t have the same Block M as the men’s jackets until 1991.)
Then, the WAA appears to have dropped ice hockey in 1937, without explanation.
The early women’s ice hockey players were largely forgotten by the campus. In 1943, The Michigan Daily confidently announced that “the University's first women's ice hockey team,” the “Bond Bombers,” would be raising money for war bonds. It was as if the 1933–36 teams had never existed.
The “Bond Bombers” were, in fact, a publicity stunt by members of U-M’s junior class, using brooms instead of hockey sticks, promising to “sweep” the game. They were treated as a novelty and held only one game.
When Title IX was passed, in 1972, wom en’s ice hockey wasn’t among the sports that were granted varsity status by U-M, as there wasn’t a U-M women’s ice hockey team at the time.
Fast forward to 1996, when the Daily announced, once again: “For the first time
Men’s ice hockey was granted varsity status in 1922, while women’s ice hockey is still a club sport. Today, women players pay for their own equipment, travel, and ice time.
in recent memory, the University has a women's hockey team.” (In fact, this team was not new; it had been started in 1995.)
“Everyone is always like, ‘Oh wow, women’s ice hockey, I never knew there was such a thing.’ But there is—I'm a woman and I play hockey,” sophomore defensive player Catie Grasso told the 1996 Daily
Unlike prior teams, this one had real, concrete staying power, continuing to the present day.
Once again, in the late 1990s, the possibility of varsity status was raised, then nixed for reasons of competitions, conference arrangements, facilities, and costs to both students and U-M.
Without varsity status, women’s ice hockey is a club team and players have to pay for their own equipment, travel, and, crucially, ice time—an expensive commodity. Comparatively, the men’s ice hockey team was granted varsity status in 1922, more than 100 years ago. This past year, U-M President Santa Ono paid for the women’s ice hockey team’s ice time out of his own pocket.
In 2024, the University of Michigan began a feasibility study for a varsity women’s ice hockey team, creating potential for varsity status once more.
Rescuing History
A collection of black-andwhite photos sat dormant for a decade. Then, the owner took a closer look and wondered if the photos belonged at the Bentley.
By Amy Probst
THE BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOS were initially a mystery. Most were candid shots of enormous and elaborate paintings of Eastern European governmental and religious scenes.
Karen Majewski had acquired the photos a decade earlier—but she couldn’t recall where, specifically. “In general, I buy up old photos,” she says. “As a historian of ethnicity, I’m also interested in ethnic and immigrant artists, whose stories often go untold and whose work is often overlooked.”
After studying the photos more closely, Majewski realized that handwriting scrawled on the backs of a few photographs indicated that these were rare images showing the work of artist Cveta Popovich.
That’s when Majewski decided the photos might need to leave her collection and instead be made available to the public. So she reached out to the Bentley Historical Library.
CREATION AND DESTRUCTION
Cveta Popovich was a Serbian-born artist who arrived in the United States in 1913. He was 22 years old, starting from scratch, and would go on to paint more than 100 murals in the city of Detroit.
By the 1920s, Popovich had established himself as an acclaimed artist with a thriving studio and school in Detroit. An accomplished pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrator, he had contributed to illustrations for Mysteries of the World by Ernst Haeckel, a 1919 book on the theory of evolution. Popovich spent long hours the University of Michigan sketching lab specimen skeletons and embryos for the book, then completed the final drawings back home in his studio.
Popovich also had a growing reputation as a master muralist. The subjects of his murals were often the revered iconography in churches of multiple denominations. Other murals depicted culturally significant political events, portraiture, and opera backdrops. Popovich also worked with artist Diego Rivera in 1933 when Rivera was in Detroit painting his fresco Detroit Industry, West Wall at the Detroit Institute Arts.
But murals last only as long as the walls on which they’re painted.
Early in his career, Popovich’s studio and art school were
Many of the photos in the Cveta Popovich collection showcase his work on political and religious themes, but don’t have dates or locations. Very little of Popovich’s
work exists today, making the surviving photos—rescued and donated to the Bentley by Karen Majewski (bottom right) all the more significant.
ravaged by a fire that destroyed everything inside.
Then, in 1928, his mural Stage Curtain in Detroit’s Miles Theatre was demolished when the building was razed to make way for Albert Kahn’s new Griswold Building.
In 1968, as an elderly Popovich continued giving lessons to a new generation of artists, more of his murals and icons inside the Ravanica Serbian Orthodox Church of Detroit were destroyed when the building was condemned and torn down.
In 1978, more than a decade after Popovich’s death, iconostases inside Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana, for which Popovich cut every stencil by hand, were destroyed by fire.
Very little of Popovich’s work exists today.
Which made Majewski’s discovery of photographs of his work all the more remarkable.
HISTORY’S HUMAN LINK
Majewski is the former mayor of Hamtramck, first vice president of the Polish American Historical Association, and holds a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. And she comes across a lot of old stuff.
In 2013, Majewski and her husband, artist Matt Feazell, rescued a whole building in Hamtramck. Today, it’s Tekla Vintage where Majewski sells vintage clothing and treasures.
“I’m always looking to rescue things that seem historically important,” Majewski says. And when she spent time with the Popovich photos, she thought of the Bentley. “I know it’s secure and they will be preserved and made available to researchers,” which is important to her as both humanitarian and historian.
It’s work for which the Bentley is deeply appreciative.
“Today, the ability to see Popovich’s work in person is sadly rare, and so we are grateful to [Karen] for recovering the images and donating them to the Bentley,” says Michelle McClellan, the Johanna Meijer Magoon Principal Archivist for the Bentley Historical Library. “This perfectly illustrates our mission: we preserve materials that might otherwise be lost and we make them accessible for everyone to explore and appreciate.”
McClellan says the photos will be made available to artists, researchers, and anyone who wants to know more about Popovich’s incredible life, as well as “the rich multi-ethnic history of Michigan, and the legacy of Detroit’s mural artists.”
In the meantime, Majewski will keep an eye out for more history that needs a home.
“I see a lot of stuff stashed in people’s attics and basements, and on curbs,” Majewski says. “I’m always asking myself, does this need to be saved? Is it of historical significance? Or is it just so lovely . . . something that will make somebody happy to see?”
Equal Footing
Once a top athlete whose options were limited in the time before gender equity in sports, Alyce Sigler now volunteers at the Bentley, where a bit of serendipity has her researching Title IX.
By Katie Vloet
OVER THE SUMMER, ALYCE SIGLER was giddy when she talked about the Summer Olympics in Paris. “Did you know that we have 15 University of Michigan swimmers at the Olympics this year? Fifteen! Representing 11 different countries!”
Sigler volunteers with the varsity swimming and diving teams at Michigan, so her enthusiasm wasn’t surprising. Yet she was also looking through another lens: that of a one-time top athlete who competed in a pre-Title IX world.
Sigler was 17 at the 1964 Olympic trials, competing in backstroke and individual medley. She swam well but did not win the chance to compete at the Tokyo Olympics that summer.
She then headed to U-M as a business student, and she joined the women’s swimming team. But this was 1965, and the swim team was a far cry from what it is today: it was a club team and wouldn’t be added as a varsity sport for another decade, and women swam in the recreation Margaret Bell Pool rather than the Matt Mann Pool that was home to the men’s varsity team.
She swam for two years, and the club team did very well, winning what was then called a National Championship in 1966. A varsity program, though, may have provided the rigor to set her up for future success. “If I’d come 10 years later, it would’ve been
vastly different,” Sigler says. “I think then I’d have had a wonderful opportunity to try for the next Olympics.”
Sigler turned her focus solely to academics and earned her BBA in 1969, then a master’s of library sciences in 1970. A career as a management consultant at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and a managing director at the multinational law firm Seyfarth Shaw followed.
In 2009, she returned to Ann Arbor, where she has been active as a member of the Advisory Board for Intercollegiate Athletics, a program director with the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams, a volunteer with the U-M Museum of Art, the optiMize student social impact program in LSA, the Women’s Health Leadership Board at Michigan Medicine, and much more.
She recently met Bentley Director Alexis Antracoli and told her about her affinity for libraries. The conversation evolved into her taking on volunteer duties at the library, beginning with a project researching Title IX, the landmark 1972 federal civil rights law that prohibits sexbased discrimination at any school that receives federal funding.
It’s a perfect fit, Sigler says. “I have been aware of the influences of Title IX on women’s sports for a long time, of course,” and she has learned much more while digging through dozens of boxes in the Bentley archives. Ultimately, her research will be used by a faculty member who is teaching about Title IX and who reached out to the Bentley for assistance.
Sigler was doing her research during the time of the Paris Olympics over the summer. For the first time, the Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in 2024 featured gender parity: half the athletes were women, half were men. It is the same kind of equity envisioned by the authors of the Title IX legislation a half century ago.
“It’s wonderful for all the young girls coming up today,” Sigler says. “They have so many choices, a whole world of choices.”
“Go Forward and Shine Bright”
Meet Jerianne Clarke, a U-M junior who is currently a student docent with the historic Detroit Observatory on Central Campus. We sat down with Jerianne to talk about her work and how she is impacting the way history is shared on campus—and beyond.
Tell us about your work at the Observatory, what is it that you do?
As a docent, I give tours of the Observatory, and also give different tours on campus like our walking tour of key moments in U-M history, and our Law School history walking tour. There’s flexibility to create our own tours, to do research, to give talks and presentations—in many ways, we can make it what we want. I’m always learning, which is perfect for a nerd like me.
With so much freedom to make the position your own, is there a particular project you’d like to tackle?
Yes, my goal is to highlight the stories of Black students who have previously attended U-M, whose histories have gone largely unnoticed. I want to let people of color know they’re not alone, and there are people who came before them. They fought for us to have better treatment and accommodations at the University. Better resources. I want to give light to their stories because history repeats itself whether we like it or not. There are so many students who can relate to this history but have no idea it exists.
Creating that knowledge can create a sense of comfort, especially when you’re only about 2–3 percent of the campus population. I am in many different spaces that support Black students, so I want to make sure they can see the resilience and the joy and the accomplishments of other Black students who attended U-M. I want them to have something that encourages them beyond their academics, that encourages them to go forward and shine bright.
Many people don’t realize that the Detroit Observatory is actually on Central Campus, and in many ways it’s a hidden treasure. What do you wish more people knew about the Detroit Observatory?
That we have Astronomy Nights with tours on Friday evenings, where you can come and look through a 167-year-old telescope, as long as it’s not too cloudy. There’s also the fact that the Observatory is the second-oldest building on campus and maintains so much of its original
structure—it’s beyond cool. You don’t often get to be in rooms with things that old. Being able to interact and create experiences with all this history is something I recommend for everyone.
As someone with a double major in political science and Afroamerican and African studies, and a minor in environmental science, has the docent experience impacted how you’re thinking about your future?
I’ve always had a passion for doing work related to cultural preservation and education, especially with Caribbean culture. Doing work directly with the Observatory and the Bentley Historical Library—and engaging with research and the public— helped me realize I can make a career out of this. I do want to make an impact with the research I do for the Observatory, creating resources that other docents can build upon. That way, the Observatory can be more of a beacon versus a little building out of the way.
“Trustworthy, Kindly, and Good”
Sam Baylis had a long career at U-M serving at the side of President Angell at the turn of the 20th century as a coachman, chauffeur, butler, and friend.
By Kim Clarke
SAM BAYLIS MAY HAVE BEEN the most recognizable Black man in Ann Arbor at the turn of the 20th century.
For more than 30 years, Baylis served at the side of U-M President James B. Angell. He had various titles: chauffeur, coachman, servant, butler, friend.
And, it seems, everyone knew him. A visitor arriving at Ann Arbor’s train station once asked a carriage driver to take him to Angell’s house. The driver was new to town and asked a fellow coachman about the location.
“Dr. Angell? Oh, he lives up with Sam Baylis,” came the answer.
Baylis worked for the university at a time when African American people made up less than three percent of Ann Arbor’s population. Characterizations of him, while seemingly flattering, reflect racist views by white people who expected Black people to be servile and obliging. It is a theme in many of the archived descriptions of his life and work.
A native of Ontario, Canada, Baylis first worked for Angell in 1884 as an 18-year-old coachman, managing a team of bay horses and driving a carriage throughout the city. He was said to be “resplendent in his coachman’s livery.” He welcomed countless dignitaries to the President’s House, including Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Wu Ting-fang, China’s ambassador to the United States.
While Baylis was highly regarded on campus and throughout the city, he could not avoid overt racism. In 1900, after Baylis had purchased a house and moved it to an empty lot on Mary Street south of campus, a perpetrator tried to destroy the home using dynamite. While the blast shattered windows and rattled the neighborhood, no one was hurt.
The crime also shook the community’s psyche.
“Mr. Baylis is one of the most respected colored men of the city,” reported the Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat. “He is a first-class citizen.”
Local attorney Hartwig H. Herbst made a futile call for police to track down the perpetrator. “We might expect such cowardly crimes in South Carolina or Mississippi,” Herbst said, “but they can find no justification in the noble state of Michigan, least of all in Ann Arbor, where the great University is located.”
Shirley Wheeler Smith, longtime secretary of the university and Angell’s biographer, called Baylis “the majordomo of the President’s House” who was particularly supportive of the president when he became a widower in 1902. “How much of Angell’s happiness throughout his remaining years was owed to this sunny, unobtrusive, faithful Negro will never be calculated,” Smith wrote.
When Angell died in 1916—five years after retiring—Baylis was at his side. “Today, everything’s all wrong,” Baylis told The Michigan Daily. “We all feel it, sir, we all feel it.”
In his will, Angell recognized Baylis and a second household employee —Catherine Martin, a white woman who supported the president’s family for nearly 50 years— for their “long and faithful service,” leaving each of them $200 (close to $6,000 in today’s dollars).
Baylis died in 1918 at age 51.
“Sam Baylis was a faithful servant, trustworthy, kindly and good,” the Ann Arbor News wrote, “and there are many not of his own race who will remember him with kindness for many years.”
The papers of U-M President James Angell include a picture of Sam Baylis and Angell’s will, in which he left Baylis $200 (around $6,000 today).
Getting the Ball Rolling
The spectacle of the annual “Architect’s Ball” on campus was a sight to behold from the 1920s until the start of World War II. Now, a new group of students is bringing it back.
By Madeleine Bradford
FOR THEIR ANNUAL DANCE IN 1912, U-M’s architecture students invited the campus to join them in Packard Hall, a popular social venue near campus. These dances were small, informal, and known as the “T-Square Trots,” after a T-shaped ruler favored by architects.
Eventually, these small gatherings would transform into one of the most unusual celebrations held on campus, growing in both size and spectacle.
Circus and vaudeville acts were added in between dance sets in the mid-1910s. By 1921, the dance was a large, elegant occasion, held in the Michigan Union, and known alternately as the “May Party” or “Architects’ Ball.” That year, it featured flickering candelabras alongside leafy green palms, and attendees were asked to dress in “summer formalwear.”
In 1922, the future first dean of U-M’s College of Architecture, Professor Emil Lorch, was inspired by the lavish, over-the-top Beaux Arts Balls of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris to add creative themes to the Architects’ Ball. Beaux-Arts balls were sprouting across the United States and Europe, where architects would dress in costumes
modeled after knights, clowns, Shakespeare plays, and even their own buildings.
U-M’s architectural students competed to submit design ideas for the ball throughout the 1920s and 1930s. A jury of faculty selected the winner, and architectural students then crafted intricate, themed decorations. The dance moved to the women’s Barbour Gymnasium, whose entry and interior were transformed for the occasion.
For a ball themed after an underwater grotto, students and faculty walked through a whale’s mouth, and the orchestra played from the hull of a half-sunken ship, while crepe-paper jellyfish floated above. For a fairy-themed ball, guests entered between the roots of a gnarled tree and found a world of large toadstools and flowers, overhung by a giant golden spiderweb. Some of the early decorations and costumes were also culturally appropriative, with one dance’s theme simply being described as “the Orient.”
With the start of World War II, this annual dance petered out.
However, in 2024, a group of students at U-M’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning decided to create a new Architects’ Ball, titled “Frameworks.”
According to its website, the new ball focused on creating adaptive structures for the future, and featured “magic dreamscapes, experiential music, delicious food, and as many people as could fit.” It included student art installations, such as a piñata made of discarded architectural models, smashed mid-party to reveal the candy inside. Students dressed as galaxies and jellyfish, and even wore hats shaped like buildings, in Beaux-Arts tradition, connecting past to present.
French BeauxArts Balls were the inspiration for what became “Architects’ Balls” at U-M and featured lavish, over-thetop decorations.
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MICHIGAN’S FAILED ANARCHIST UTOPIA
Built around anarchistic principles of self-government, the Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community wrote this letter to Albert Einstein in 1934, inviting him to Michigan to help celebrate their first year of existence. But behind the scenes, the group was in chaos.
Read about Sunrise’s inception and implosion on p. 16
