Collections Magazine, Spring 2024

COLLECTIONS

A Sporting Chance

Before they could swing a racket, nock an arrow, or shoot a basket, women at U-M had to fight for a space to exercise and play. Physical freedom propelled other forms of emancipation, leading women to carve out spaces for themselves campus-wide.

Collin Gaudard of Michigan-based Mammoth Distilling stands in a crop of unique rye on South Manitou Island. Read the story of this singular plant on p. 4.

4

Fields of Gold

How do you regrow a nearly extinct strain of rye seed? One researcher followed clues in the archive that led to seed banks, national parks, a whiskey distillery, and ultimately to resurfacing a forgotten chapter of Michigan agricultural history.

10 A Sporting Chance

In the early 1900s, women at U-M demanded an outdoor space where they could play sports and exercise. The expansion of athletics went beyond the field as women carved out their own spaces, including the first women’s-only dormitory.

18 The Business of the Hour

At U-M, Belford Lawson was an exceptional student, an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and a prize-winning orator. After graduation, he’d argue two landmark civil rights cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

1 Picture This ABRIDGED

2 Select Bentley Bites IN THE STACKS

24 Seeing Stars through the Clouds

26 Language Lessons 28 Teaching Black History in the Early 20th Century PROFILE

30 “Archives are for Everyone”

BENTLEY UNBOUND

31 A Riot, a Murder, and a Psychic

CORRECTIONS: In the last issue, we mistakenly identified the city of Minsk as being in Russia in 1961 instead of the Soviet Union. We also titled Frank Murphy as mayor of Detroit at a time when he was governor of Michigan. In our story on Chandler Davis, we called him a professor when he was an instructor. In that same story, we erroneously labeled the McClardy HUAC hearings as the McCarthy HUAC hearings. Finally, the Director’s Notes referred to the Stanley and Judy Frankel Detroit Observatory, when it should have been the Judy and Stanley Frankel Detroit Observatory. We regret the errors.

Picture This

Thousands of historical photos will soon be available digitally as part of a new effort to better serve local communities.

Mel Ivory, co-founder of Ivory Photo Engraving Company, began his photography career doing photo finishing at both his father’s and his uncle’s drug stores. This early work led him into a career in photography that began in the mid-1920s when he was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Many of his earliest photographs capture the University of Michigan campus and life in Ann Arbor in the 1920s and 1930s.

After graduating in 1931, Mel continued his photo finishing work and began providing photography services to the local community, and his work continued into the 1970s. Ten years later, the Bentley Historical Library acquired Mel Ivory’s extensive collection of photographic negatives documenting the built environment, local businesses, and community life in Washtenaw County in the middle of the 20th century.

As Ann Arbor celebrates its bicentennial this year, the Bentley Library wanted to

make the Ivory Photo collection available to the entire community. Staff have been working hard behind the scenes to prepare the collection for digitization and will be making the first batch of images accessible in the coming months.

When the project is complete, anyone will be able to view these images of life in 20th-century Ann Arbor online through the University of Michigan’s digital collections platform. My hope is that access to these images supports community commemorations and individual recollections, and spurs the creativity of the entire Ann Arbor community as it reflects on its history.

Among the highlights of the Ann Arbor portion of the collection are photos of the World War II era, images of local businesses that may or may not still exist, and depictions of people participating in community events and organizations like the Girl Scouts and the Parent Teacher Association. The Ivory Photo negatives also contain images of surrounding communities, including Ypsilanti, Dexter, Chelsea, Saline, and Milan, and even a few images of Detroit, Big Rapids, and Cadillac. There’s really something for everyone in the collection.

(Left, top to bottom) Ivory photos capturing life in Ann Arbor include an unnamed photographer, possibly Mel Ivory, at a football game in 1940; students at the Pretzel Bell, 1937; an Ann Arbor mechanic, 1942; a view of State Street, 1931.

The Ivory Photo digitization project is one among what we hope will be many efforts that focus on community engagement. In Ann Arbor and beyond, we plan to focus more on community partnerships with a wider range of users, creating welcoming physical and digital spaces. This year we are already at work to launch new public events designed to serve the many communities represented in our collections. Stay tuned for announcements about upcoming events in our newsletter and digital communications; we are excited about these new efforts that will help us better serve our users.

Alexis Antracoli Director

Alexis Antracoli Director, Bentley Historical Library

abridged

500+

Number of historical football films that have been made available online, including the 1927 Michigan Stadium “Dedication Game” between U-M and Ohio State (U-M won 21-0).

POP QUIZ

U-M students have dressed up the campus sculpture of the “Cube” as:

Dice

Rubik’s Cube

Both of the Above

Answer: Both of the above! Archived photos attest that the Cube has become dice at least twice. See for yourself at: myumi.ch/M6b35

Marching Into Michigan History

George Pope Benjamin is recognized as one of the first known African American members of the U-M Marching Band. His daughter, Carol Zak, recently donated

this photo of the marching band; Benjamin is in the third row behind the drums, seventh from the left. He graduated in 1936 with a bachelor’s degree in music.

In 1940, he was among the first African Americans to receive a master’s degree from U-M’s School of Music.

abridged

Hall of Fame

The construction crew in this photo is hard at work on Newberry Hall, which was completed in 1891 and cost $40,000. It was the campus home of the Students’ Christian Association of the University of Michigan before it housed the Young Women’s Christian Association. By 1921, campus religious groups had reorganized, and the building was used for English, history, and philosophy classes. When the Department of Classical Studies needed a space for its museum in 1928, Newberry Hall was the ideal building. In 1953, the building’s name was officially changed to the Francis W. Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, though the original Newberry Hall name on the façade is still visible today.

“HOUSE SIGN AND ORNAMENTAL PAINTER, DEALER IN PAINTS, OILS, VARNISHES, GLASS”

Fred Sorg’s business description from his shop at 26 and 28 East Washington Street, Ann Arbor, as depicted in an archived combination atlas of Washtenaw County. See the full drawing at: myumi.ch/Q6N17

10,200

Number of negatives in the Ivory Photo collection currently being digitized as part of the Bentley’s contribution to the Ann Arbor bicentennial.

$1.50

The price of hiring a horse-drawn carriage in 1910, available to take couples “to and from parties” before midnight, according to an ad in The Michigan Daily

“I had the unique honor of being a station master, hiding, feeding, and instructing the passengers during the day, then taking them to the waiting barges and canoes during the night.”

The Reverend William C. Monroe, who helped men and women escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad in his role as pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Detroit. His “Eyewitness History” account in the church’s archived records describes how members of the church helped thousands escape enslavement for freedom in Canada.

Name, Nickname

Married Name, Alternate Spellings, Initials

WASHINGTON,

Some of the locations visited in this issue of Collections magazine.

Possible iterations for a research subject’s name. Thinking about these in advance will save you time and effort at the archive, according to tips shared on the Bentley’s social media channels. Follow @umichBentley on Instagram and X for more research suggestions!

SIBERIA, RUSSIA WIND CAVE, SOUTH DAKOTA

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

D.C.

One researcher’s quest to resurrect a nearly extinct strain of rye seed started in the archives but quickly expanded to seed banks, national parks, a whiskey distillery, and beyond. The improbable journey resurfaces a forgotten chapter of Michigan agricultural history.

By Lara Zielin

WAS FEBRUARY 1921, AND FRANK SPRAGG WAS EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT SEEDS.

Spragg, a professor of plant breeding at Michigan Agricultural College, had been invited by University of Michigan Professor H.H. Bartlett to the upcoming Academy of Science meeting.

Spragg’s archived reply enthusiastically accepted the invitation and offered Bartlett several subjects of interest upon which he could speak. Would Bartlett want a talk about producing seeds, registering seeds, and distributing seeds? If not, perhaps something about plant breeding? Or the mathematics of genetic plant expectations?

Spragg’s pioneering work at Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing, now Michigan State University (MSU), meant he was an expert in all of it.

Maybe realizing that he was offering up a sizable array of options, Spragg wrote to Bartlett, “Perhaps I had best hear from you again before deciding on a subject.”

But then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he penned one more option at the bottom of the letter. “Perhaps a story of how our [seed] distributions were accomplished would be of interest.”

And there, tucked into his hand-written list of 12 seed types, was the name of a seed that would become one of Spragg’s biggest successes. It would put Michigan on the map as an agricultural leader. And, years later, it would be an archived clue that a researcher named Ari Sussman would follow to revive the seed and once again enable it to thrive.

The story was right there in Spragg’s handwritten scrawl: A little seed called Rosen rye was about to change everything.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

The story of Rosen rye begins well before Spragg’s talk—starting in Russia around 1894, when a young agricultural student at Moscow University named Joseph Rosen was flagged as a member of the Russian Social Democrat Party. The group was considered revolutionary, and Rosen was sentenced to exile in Siberia as punishment. But Rosen was able to escape to Germany, then to the United States in 1903. He found work on a farm for two years, then enrolled at Michigan Agricultural College.

That’s where his path crossed with Spragg in 1909. And Rosen came with ideas.

Specifically, Rosen had a hunch that parts of Michigan would be ideal for growing rye because of the state’s climate and light, sandy soils. Spragg agreed, so Rosen asked his father back in Russia to send him rye seeds. Spragg and Rosen planted the first rye crops, which produced “double the yields obtainable with any other variety,” according to one agricultural bulletin. Spragg named the seed Rosen rye in his student’s honor, and farmers around the state clamored for seeds. The only difficulty was how easily the rye crops were cross-pollinated. Any gust of wind could pollinate the rye with an inferior crop, reducing the quality of the whole yield.

This was a disastrous turn and, by 1918, out of the 250,000 acres of Rosen rye in Michigan, “only a small amount [was] passing the regulations for certification,” wrote the Michigan State Board of Agriculture in its annual bulletin. “The community effort that has made this variety the standard for Michigan is praiseworthy, but an even greater community effort will be required to keep it pure.”

Spragg knew that he needed to find a way to isolate the rye crop to protect it. For this, he’d be on his own, since Rosen had left Michigan for work in Minnesota training agronomists on high-yield crops, then to New York where he headed up the agricultural office in the International Commercial Bank of Petrograd.

Spragg scoured the state for a location that could save Rosen rye from extinction. He found one in an unlikely place: an island surrounded by shipwrecks, where a hardy group of farmers were scraping out a living. He was about to change their futures.

ISLAND TIME

South Manitou Island is roughly 17 miles west of Leland, Michigan, in the cold waters of Lake Michigan. The island is approximately eight square miles, with a lighthouse on its southern tip, sand dunes along its western coast, and farms in the middle.

The farmers living on the island were mostly subsisting on what they grew. If there were extra quantities of fruits or grain crops, they were sold to steamboats on their way to big cities on the Great Lakes like Chicago or Buffalo. But Spragg saw the isolation of the island as a huge benefit—it would prevent cross-pollination and preserve the quality of Rosen rye. And the high yields of Rosen rye would mean the farmers could produce more crops, ideally earning more.

Spragg was convincing and, by 1919, the farmers on the island were exclusively planting Rosen rye. To keep the Rosen rye strains free from other pollinating seeds, all the farming families on the island made

(Top to bottom)

Rosen rye growing on the historic Hutzler Farm on South Manitou Island; the cold waters of Lake Michigan between the mainland and South Manitou Island keep Rosen rye free from cross-pollination.

a pact—swearing under penalty of drowning—to raise only this rye.

“In perfect isolation of the island’s forest-surrounded fields, there has been produced some of the purest and best quality of rye known,” wrote Howard C. Rather in his 1925 bulletin Coming Through With Rye. “Island rye, resulting from this careful selection work, has won sweepstakes honors at the International Grain and Hay Show, the greatest distinction which rye can achieve.”

The South Manitou farmers became known as the “Rye Kings” and the island was the “World’s Rye Center.”

Soon, there was a high demand for these certified rye seeds in the U.S., namely by major whiskey-producing regions. The high-quality rye produced better, more flavorful whiskey. An advertisement for Old Schenley Rye called Rosen rye “the most compact and flavorful rye kernels that Mother Earth produces.”

The rye business boomed—even through Prohibition. The reputation of Michigan Rosen rye ensured that whiskey bootleggers along the East Coast and beyond continued to supply it and use it to make spirits.

Rosen rye had taken root in Michigan, but even so, its extinction was nigh.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION

By the 1940s, the rigors of agricultural life had taken their toll on the farmers of South Manitou, and many were in bad health. Their children didn’t want to take on the labor-intensive work of farming rye, opting instead for life on the mainland with better jobs and larger communities. With their prospects diminishing, many of the farmers sold their land to a developer named William Boals, who began to introduce tourism to the island.

Coupled with the farming exodus on South Manitou was a shift in American drinking habits. Old, rich whiskeys were swapped for lighter spirits like vodka, which saw a 300 percent increase in sales from 1949 to 1950.

The last distiller to use Rosen rye was Mitcher’s in Pennsylvania, which ceased production in 1970. Frank Spragg was

Ari Sussman (left) first read about Rosen rye through an archived whiskey advertisement. He was able to obtain 18 grams of the original seed, which he’s now grown into enough rye to share with farmers and other distillers.

SANDRA WONG GEROUX

long dead—he’d been killed in a car accident in 1924—and Rosen had died in New York in 1949. Rosen rye and its history were vanishing.

Rosen rye might have disappeared entirely except for a researcher and whiskey distiller named Ari Sussman who, while poring through documents in an archive in Kentucky, stumbled upon a copy of the Old Schenley Rye ad—the one that said Rosen rye was the best that “Mother Earth produces.”

Sussman was intrigued. The ad specifically mentioned that Rosen rye was Michigan-grown. Sussman was born in Michigan and grew up in Ann Arbor. He’d attended Michigan State University and had managed MSU’s research and development distillery but had never heard of Rosen rye.

As the whiskey maker for Michigan-based Mammoth Distilling, Sussman wondered if Rosen rye was gone entirely. Were any seeds left anywhere and, if so, could they be grown—and turned into whiskey—once again?

Curious, he started diving into archives across Michigan, including the Bentley, looking at old seed catalogs, advertisements, and letters like the archived correspondence between Spragg and Bartlett.

it? The same problem that had presented itself to Spragg and Rosen now presented itself to Sussman: If he wanted to keep the rye pure, he’d have to find somewhere that it couldn’t be cross-pollinated.

Like Spragg before him, Sussman turned his eyes to South Manitou Island.

PARKS AND PRESERVATION

In 1961, Michigan Senator Phil Hart introduced two bills to establish the nation’s first national lakeshores: Pictured Rocks in the Upper Peninsula; and Sleeping Bear Dunes in the Lower Peninsula, the latter comprising 35 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and both North and South Manitou Islands.

Hart, whose political platform was grounded in environmental and civil rights issues, fought for almost a decade to get

In the fall of 2020, the first modern crop of Rosen rye was planted on the island, “about the size of a horse blanket,” Sussman says.

The work was largely manual labor. “You can take tractors, but they have to be small enough to load onto a landing craft. Everything needs to be ferried. The weather has to be perfect because the lake is so treacherous there.”

Now, three years later, Sussman says Mammoth has enough Rosen rye to make whiskey and keep planting seeds. “We think it makes a full-flavored whiskey with a pedigree,” he says. “We want to make Rosen rye whiskey that honors our agricultural heritage, and that tells the story of Rosen, Spragg, and the South Manitou Island farmers.”

“WE WANT TO MAKE ROSEN RYE WHISKEY THAT HONORS OUR AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE, AND THAT TELLS THE STORY OF ROSEN, SPRAGG, AND THE SOUTH MANITOU ISLAND FARMERS.”

“The Bentley was central to my early research and work,” Sussman says.

In the archives, Sussman began to put together the whole picture: of Rosen, Spragg, the “Rye Kings” of South Manitou Island, and the vanished seed.

Sussman and Mammoth Distilling founder Chad Munger talked to everyone they could think of to track down Rosen rye seeds—farmers, agricultural businesses, academics—but none of the leads were successful. Then, Eric Olson, the head of grain breeding at Michigan State University, contacted the federal seed bank and was able to obtain 18 grams, about a small handful.

This precious quantity was grown in isolated greenhouses and walk-in coolers at MSU, eventually producing enough rye for a foundation crop. But where to plant

the parks established. His archived papers at the Bentley show his tireless efforts— and his elation once the legislation was signed by President Richard Nixon.

“When people join together with their focus firmly on what the future requires, persistence and dedication succeed,” he wrote to Willard Wolfe of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council on October 28, 1970.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was a boon for Michigan’s environment— not to mention its growing tourism industry—but it made Sussman’s quest to replant Rosen rye on the island all the more difficult. Was it even possible to plant crops on land owned by the National Park Service?

Sussman says that Mammoth Distilling invested heavily in the effort to resurrect Rosen rye, and that Mammoth ultimately was able to obtain a historical use permit for South Manitou. “We really believed there was value in the crop, and that it told an important story about Michigan,” Sussman says.

Distillers from across the world have contacted Mammoth about accessing the seeds for whiskey, Sussman says. And farmers want the seeds, too.

“Growing rye is great for the environment, and it can provide an alternative to corn and soybeans,” Sussman says. It’s hardier, combats soil erosion, grows when other plants don’t, and is beneficial for water filtration. “It’s worth the investment. It can be incredibly beneficial to agriculture in northern Michigan.”

For its part, the Michigan legislature seems to be taking notice. Recently, Michigan Senate Resolution Number 63 was passed, recognizing June 23 as “Rosen Rye Day.”

Sussman says none of this work would have been possible without archived records to point him in the right direction. “The Bentley is an amazing resource,” he says. “We have this heritage, and it’s a great story. It’s wonderful that it’s been preserved—and is now being recognized again.”

Sources for this story include: University of Michigan Herbarium collection; Rather, Howard: Coming Through With Rye, Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, 1925. Williams, Alanen, Tishler: An Historic Agricultural Landscape Study of South Manitou Island at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan, National Park Service, 1996. Guide to the Papers of Joseph A. Rosen (1877-1949), Center for Jewish History. Jewish Telegraph Agency, Daily News Bulletin, April 3, 1949. Leelanau Ticker, August 22, 2022. Environmental Activism in Michigan online exhibition, Michigan in the World, 2017.

C hance C hance Sporting Sporting A A

Women at u -m fought to have athletic facilities where they could exercise and play sports, same as the men. The battle highlights the ways in which women had to carve out spaces for themselves on campus time and again.

By Madeleine Bradford

1894, 1894, In In In In In In In In In

an editorial in The Michigan Daily blamed women for bad ticket sales to sports events.

The editorial hit a raw nerve.

“How can you expect a woman to be personally interested in something from which she is shut out?” one anonymous alumna responded indignantly in the Daily

“When I came here, I was told that it would not be proper for two or three women to go to anything unattended.”

If women could not even watch sports without a chaperone, she reasoned, how could anyone blame them for not buying tickets to the games?

Her response underscores just how excluded women were from campus athletics at the time.

That would soon change.

Nancy Fix Anderson, a professor emerita of history at Loyola University, describes in her book The Sporting Life: Victorian Sports and Games (Praeger, 2010) how women’s athletics underwent a dramatic shift in the 1880s and 1890s.

As women pushed back against restrictive norms of femininity at the time, Anderson notes, they joined a larger movement known as “the emancipation of women,” pushing for “not just legal, political, educational, and employment rights, but also physical freedom.”

This movement excluded Black women, and women from many other countries; it was an imperfect push for conditional equality. Still, even that imperfect push made a difference.

As women’s athletics expanded rapidly in the United States, so too did athletics for women at the University of Michigan. Women students took up tennis, archery, fencing, horseback riding, and more.

The sidelines were not enough. Women were determined to be on the field.

The question now became: which field would that be?

Divisions of Time and Space

The very landscape of the University of Michigan was shaped, for years, by gender.

Waterman Gymnasium, the first structural gym at U-M, was built in 1894, the same year the editorial was published about women needing chaperones at sports events. The gymnasium before that had technically been little more than a tent, used for shelter while exercising. Women students were allowed to have limited, specific use of Waterman Gymnasium: they were permitted three hours of gym time in the morning for exercise and needed to apply for special permission to host dances there.

The majority of the time, however, Waterman Gymnasium was devoted to men, who already had plenty of space for exercise. Men also regularly competed outdoors, first on the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds, then on Regents Field, which was later called Ferry Field.

There was implicit social pressure to keep men and women divided in university spaces. Although early women on campus experienced a degree of freedom, they still faced obstacles such as professors frequently insisting that women all sit together in medical classrooms, and the division of the first General Library’s reading room by gender.

If women students hoped to have enough space and time for athletics, outside of just three hours in the morning, it was clear that they would need to carve out spaces for themselves.

So they did.

Women at U-M threw themselves into a fundraising effort, selling cakes and ice cream, convincing professors to share the proceeds of campus events, and petitioning people for funds. The Women’s League raised nearly $21,000, and U-M Regents provided the remainder of the funding. Their work resulted in Barbour Gymnasium, the first true space for women to exercise on campus, built near what is today the intersection of North University and Fletcher streets and the site of U-M’s current chemistry building.

(Top and bottom) Women partially self-funded Barbour Gymnasium, their very own exercise space at U-M. By 1903, when these photos were taken, women could play basketball, fence, lift weights, and more.

(Right) Women’s basketball team class captains from 1902–1905.

(Far left and center) U-M student Myrtle White spent the summer of 1909 raising money for a women’s athletic field, finally securing a large donation from alumnus and Michigan Senator Thomas Witherell Palmer.

(Top and bottom) Palmer Field became a place for U-M women to play tennis and archery, and its fundraising success prompted another campaign to build a women’s-only dormitory.

The completed gymnasium became a space where women at U-M could participate in sports such as rope climbing, relay racing, high jumping, indoor baseball, indoor tennis, track, and gymnastics.

But there still weren’t outdoor spaces specific to women’s sports.

In 1903, a football game played on the wooden floor of the Barbour Gymnasium led to injuries for at least one woman athlete, and by 1908, The Michigan Daily wrote that gym instructor Ethel Perrin was pleading for a field where “University women” could “play basketball, field hockey, longball, tennis, and other outdoor games.”

By 1908, U-M women decided they would simply have to do what they always did when they faced barriers on campus: they would advocate and make space for themselves.

That year, the U-M Women’s Athletics Association partnered with the U-M Women’s League to launch yet another massive campaign, to fund a field of their own.

A Question of Caps and Capitol

For the new field, U-M women students selected Sleepy Hollow, a space located near where the new Central Campus Recreation Building, or CCRB, is rising today.

The space was beloved by U-M’s students at the time. It was one of the spots that traditionally hosted “Cap Night,” a ceremonial gathering at which freshman burned their class “caps” in a massive bonfire that signaled their transition to the sophomore class.

Together, the Women’s Athletic Association and the League brought a proposal to the Board of Regents for the purchase of Sleepy Hollow. They wanted to transform it from a grassy space into an athletic field for women. Their initial proposal was accepted by the Regents but was met with skepticism from the community as a whole.

“There was a great deal of head-shaking when the Regents turned over the deed for the women’s athletic field over to the women of the University last spring,” The Michigan Daily noted in 1908.

Although they promised to raise enough money to pay U-M back for the field, not many believed they could actually do it.

“But this fundraising didn’t discourage the co-eds; as a matter of fact, it instilled a grim determination in them, and—well, now they are $5,000 richer than they were a year ago,” the Daily concluded.

“To Miss Myrtle White belongs a great portion of this success.”

Enter Myrtle

Who was Myrtle White? A junior at the time, working toward her Bachelor of Arts degree; a painter; a photographer whose Kodachrome photos later found a home in the Bentley’s archives; and a deeply determined woman with a passion for community improvement.

During White’s time as the treasurer for the Women’s League, her fundraising efforts changed the shape of U-M’s campus.

When the Women’s League first began fundraising for the new athletic field, donations trickled in: $295 here, $100 there. They would have to raise thousands of dollars to fully fund the field, but White met the challenge with optimism.

“It seems impossible to give any very large amounts, but the small ones will amount up if I can get enough of them,” White wrote to Frieda Kleinstuck, a fellow U-M student who served as president of the Women’s League, early in her efforts. “I feel real encouraged now, and am sure our undertaking is going to pay us well.”

She was right.

A letter in the archived Frieda Kleinstuck papers reveals how White spent her entire summer in 1909 working to raise more money for the field. In places like Detroit and Chicago, she used her free time to advocate for the women of U-M, asking businessmen, politicians, and alumni to help them achieve their goal.

She must have been remarkably persuasive in her arguments, because she finally got the result she hoped for: a large donation, thanks to Senator Thomas Witherell Palmer.

Senator Palmer was an ideal person to help. He had attended U-M for a year and he knew the university well. He was also a champion of women’s suffrage, so White may have suspected that he would be sympathetic to her work.

“After scheming and planning for five weeks, I finally got Senator Palmer’s subscription for $3,000. So according to our offer, the Field will be called ‘Palmer Recreation Grounds,’” White wrote to Kleinstuck.

Once they had fundraised thoroughly enough to pay off the land of Sleepy Hollow, the Women’s League turned it over to the university as Palmer Field, a dedicated space for women’s outdoors athletics.

By 1908, U-M women decided they would simply

have to do what they always did when they faced barriers on campus: they would advocate and make space for themselves.

(Clockwise from top left)

The Martha Cook Building opened its doors to around 140 women residents in late 1915.

Myrtle White took this image in 1942.

Frieda Kleinstuck (left) and an unidentified friend.

A fundraising pamphlet to solicit support for a new women’s-only dormitory.

Men and women donned their finest for the first official party at Martha Cook in December 1915. Martha Cook was built in the “Collegiate Gothic” style to emulate colleges in Europe.

Soon, the space was full of women practicing archery, tennis, field hockey, and more. It continued to host student traditions, such as Cap Night and Lantern Night, a rite of passage for U-M women when older classes symbolically passed the torch to younger classes by handing them paper lanterns.

May as Well

White’s success propelled her to do even more fundraising for the women of the university. She raised money for future improvements to the field, and while she was at it, she also decided that she may as well start raising money for a women’s dormitory.

“The Field is paid for, and I have $500 toward a dormitory fund!! Doesn’t that sound good?” she wrote to Kleinstuck.

That dormitory would later be the Martha Cook Building. Myrtle White and the Women’s League created a proposal for the space that would ultimately convince William W. Cook, a U-M law graduate and successful corporate lawyer, to donate the funds to build it.

The residence hall officially opened in the fall of 1915 proving, once again, that White and the women of U-M could create space for themselves on campus.

Further Afield

Over the years, the area of Palmer Field slowly changed; the Women’s Athletic Building was built on one end in 1928, and the Margaret Bell Pool was added to that building in 1954. That pool, a favorite for synchronized swimmers, was kept as part of the building when the Women’s Athletic Building was transformed, 23 years later, into the first Central Campus Recreation Building, or CCRB.

In 2023, the CCRB was torn down to make way for a new recreation building. Until it is constructed, a 23,000-square-foot tent is serving as a temporary exercise facility on Palmer Field, perhaps reminiscent of U-M’s first gymnasium tent.

To learn more about women’s efforts to fundraise for their own spaces at U-M, see the Frieda Kleinstuck papers, the Myrtle White papers, and The Michigan Daily Digital Archives.

Lawson

shakes hands with an unidentified lawyer on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1960. Lawson was the first Black lawyer to successfully argue a case in front of the Court.

Belford

(left)

THE BUSINESS OF THE HOUR

Belford Lawson’s work as a lawyer and activist changed the course of civil rights in the United States. He was the first Black lawyer to win a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, and he used his U-M fraternity connections to help with a second, landmark ruling. His incredible story is told, in part, through archived materials at the Bentley.

By Greg Kinney

IN THE SUMMER OF 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, writer and activist John Aubrey Davis was outraged when the Hamburger Grill on “U” Street in Washington, D.C., fired three Black employees and gave the jobs to whites. Davis and some friends organized a picket line demanding the Black employees be rehired, especially since the grill served a predominantly Black clientele. The Black workers were quickly rehired with higher pay and better hours.

Armed with that success, Davis, along with newly minted attorney Belford Lawson, and recent college graduate M. Franklin Thorne, formed the New Negro Alliance (NNA) to pressure other whiteowned businesses that served predominantly Black clientele to hire a proportional number of Black workers. The NNA would employ picketing, street protest, and economic boycotts to pressure businesses. Lawson was the NNA’s lead attorney.

When a grocery chain took legal action to stop the NNA’s picketing, Lawson fought the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—winning a landmark ruling that would be vital to the Civil Rights Movement. He would be the first African American attorney to successfully argue a case before the nation’s highest court.

Papers at the Bentley show that, long before he argued in front of the Supreme Court, Belford Lawson made a name for himself at U-M as an athlete, orator, and fraternity member. Further research in court records, newspaper stories, and secondary sources reveals that his victories would go far beyond campus—he would become a significant civil rights lawyer, a noted public speaker, national president of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, a close advisor to Senator and presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, and president of the YMCA.

MORE THAN MANUAL LABOR

Belford Vance Lawson Jr. was born July 9, 1904, in Roanoke, Virginia, the seventh of 11 children of Belford Sr. and Sarah Lawson. Belford Sr. worked in the Norfolk Southern railroad yard in Roanoke. Belford Jr. grew up and attended elementary school in Roanoke’s Gainsboro neighborhood, but the city did not provide a high school for African Americans at that time. Lawson enrolled at historically Black Hampton Institute in 1916.

Hampton at the time was mainly a manual arts training school, and Lawson’s program was focused on carpentry. Lawson’s son later recalled the story that “while atop a Hampton building hammering nails, he concluded he was not intellectually challenged. He threw the hammer to the ground and descended the ladder. He aspired to more than manual labor.”

After completing the spring 1918 term, Lawson followed the well-established, if somewhat improbable, path of several dozen Hampton students to Ferris Institute in Big Rapids, Michigan. Described as something more than a high school but not quite a college, Ferris was known for its open enrollment policy without regard to gender, race, or academic background.

Lawson spent one year at Ferris in the college prep program. He played on the varsity football and baseball teams and was a member of the campus ROTC. The 1919 football team was not very successful, but one newspaper reported that Lawson “drew the admiration of the crowd by his pluck.”

Lawson enrolled in the University of Michigan College of LSA in the fall of 1920. He decided to try to continue his football

career—despite the well-known antipathy of coach Fielding Yost toward Black players. In Yost’s 20-year tenure at Michigan, not one Black player had made the varsity squad. Three Black players are known to have tried out for the team, but none made the varsity roster. Lawson and one other Black student were on the freshman team in 1920, but neither was awarded a letter. Lawson won “R” letters with the reserve team in 1921 and 1922. He was on the varsity squad, at least briefly, in 1923. He is listed in some game programs and is in a full-squad photo, but never played in a varsity game.

Football was only a part of Lawson’s life on campus. He was an excellent student, an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and a prize-winning orator.

Lawson made it to the finals for the Atkinson oratory prize—established by the family of alumnus Charles Maurice Atkinson, who died in 1922—where each of the six contestants spoke on the topic of “Student Character, Moral and Spiritual for World Citizenship.”

Lawson’s winning speech began by acknowledging the influence of the university and those who labored there, but he said for students, “the business of the hour calls on us to do our own thinking.”

Lawson received $50 and a gold medal. He received some attention in the national press, which often noted that a Black student had won the first Atkinson prize. The Bloomington-Normal Pantagraph headlined its story “Negro Halfback Wins Oratorical Honors.” Seven months later, Lawson and his fellow Atkinson competitor Lyman Glasgow received some publicity of a different sort (see sidebar p. 22).

Lawson received his B.A. in June 1924 and took a job at Jackson College (now Jackson State University) as instructor of social science and director of the Teachers’ Professional Department. He was also football coach and athletic director. He stayed at Jackson College for three years before moving briefly to Morris Brown College in Atlanta. There, his interest in law school was revived.

Lawson was admitted to Yale Law School, where he studied for two years before financial difficulty forced him to leave. He settled in Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Supreme Liberty

Life Insurance Company and enrolled in Howard University Law School. He studied under Charles Houston, the legendary mentor of a remarkable group of law students and attorneys in the early 1930s who would go on to litigate many of the most important cases in the effort to dismantle Jim Crow. Lawson received his LL.B. in 1932 and opened a practice in Washington, D.C., in 1933 with Theodore Berry, a Cincinnati attorney and fraternity brother.

The Hamburger Grill protests, and the subsequent formation of the NNA, formed the early basis for Lawson’s career and provided a glimpse of his future work as a lawyer and civil rights activist.

“DON’T

SHOP WHERE YOU CAN’T WORK”

After the Hamburger Grill success, Davis and Lawson convened a group of D.C. activists and community leaders to expand NNA activities. “Don’t shop where you can’t work” became their organizing slogan.

The NNA conducted surveys to measure the ratio of a business’s Black customers to Black employees and then targeted the worst offenders. It published a newspaper to build community support. The NNA had considerable success in expanding job opportunities for D.C.’s Black residents, and the organization soon appeared in other cities.

However, some businesses fought back. The NNA’s picketing of the Sanitary Grocery store in Washington, D.C., became the crucial case, and a 1936 dispute would make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sanitary Grocery Company (later to become Safeway) obtained an injunction against the NNA. The injunction was upheld by a judge who ruled this was not a labor dispute as defined by the 1932 NorrisLaGuardia Act, which established labor unions’ right to picket in labor disputes, but “only a protest by Negroes, to obtain jobs for Negroes.” The ruling was affirmed by the U.S. District Court.

Lawson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the NNA represented a class of

Lawson helped publish the New Negro Opinion paper from 1933–1937, which protested discriminatory employment practices in the Washington, D.C., area and offered strategies to fight injustices.

citizens affected by Sanitary’s discriminatory employment policy and that Norris-LaGuardia’s protection extended beyond labor unions. The high court decisively overturned the lower court’s ruling. As Davis later remarked, the case established “the right to picket by non-labor union people. This case is one on which everybody else has been able to build.”

Lawson was honored at a banquet in New York City and celebrated for his success—at least in the African American press. A New York Age story described him as “the attorney whose legal brilliance starred in the victory of the New Negro Alliance case.”

But it would just be the start.

DINING CAR CURTAINS

In the Southern Railway Company’s dining cars, the two tables nearest the kitchen (the least desirable) were set aside for Black passengers with a curtain separating the Black and white tables. However, if the white section was full, the curtain could be drawn and white passengers could use the Black tables, forcing Black passengers to wait.

Elmer Henderson, an inspector for the Federal Fair Employment Practices Commission, was traveling from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta on business in 1942. Because the dining car was continually filled by white passengers, Henderson never got his meal. He filed a complaint with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).

The front page of The Michigan Daily on January 17, 1924, carried a story with the headline: “‘Leave Town,’ Says Alleged Letter of Klan.”

The letter was dropped into the mailbox of Lyman Glasgow, who was white, a cheerleader, and member of the debate team.

The unposted letter, written on “bluebook” paper, advised Glasgow, “Leave Ann Arbor now as a result of unfriendly things you have said concerning the K.K.K.”

The letter referred to Glasgow’s recent oration in a public speaking class, which had been critical of the Klan. According to the article, Glasgow assumed the letter was written by “some newly elected student Klansman.” Glasgow had no plans to leave town.

Belford Lawson had also received a letter, signed “K.K.K.,” just a few weeks before, in December 1923. Lawson wasn’t advised to leave town, but was told he was “too active,” he should “stay in his place” and “speak when spoken to.”

Initially, Lawson brushed the letter off as simply “someone who didn’t like me.” Lawson said the letter “didn’t frighten me any.”

In a ruling two years later, the ICC acknowledged Henderson had been unfairly treated and that the railroad’s dining car policy was discriminatory but found no basis for an award of damages. The Southern Railway’s remedy was to reserve the two tables exclusively for Black passengers, even if the white section was full.

Henderson was not satisfied and decided to sue. It was here that Lawson entered the case. For nearly six years he would lead a team of attorneys guiding Henderson’s cause to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court announced its decision in Henderson outlawing segregation in railroad dining cars on June 5, 1950. It was a major victory in the cause of civil rights, but the ruling was narrowly based on ICC regulation rather than the constitutional basis for the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Henderson and two other cases announced that day, though, did put a chink in Plessy’s armor.

SPEAK FOR THE DAWN

In the Henderson case, Lawson reached out to his Alpha Phi Alpha (APA) brothers for statements about their experience of mistreatment on segregated U.S. railroads to help convey to the court “the brutalizing and humiliating effects of this type of public humiliation.” Lawson was an Alpha Phi Alpha man to his core, but not an uncritical one.

He had joined APA’s Epsilon chapter as a sophomore at Michigan and would be involved in its affairs for his entire life, using the networks and friendships it provided in support of variety of causes.

He served as APA’s general counsel and was elected general president in 1946. One of his goals was to move the fraternity beyond its traditional social and philanthropic activities to a more direct involvement in current political and social movements. He issued a stirring call at the 1947 convention:

Belford Lawson is in the middle row, second from the left.

The article closed by noting the “Invisible Empire” had burned its first cross in Ann Arbor the previous Saturday night. By the summer of 1924, when Lawson graduated from U-M, K.K.K. rallies surged across the state, with thousands gathering in Jackson, Lansing, and Ann Arbor.

The great decision of this generation of Alpha men is whether we shall, with every ounce of our energy, with every dollar of our treasury, with every fiber of our mind and soul, deny the gigantic conspiracy to preserve our segregated status quo, and destroy the mighty, monstrous mockery of human decency and dignity, the yoke of Jim Crow which

hangs around our necks. To compromise is to evade the crucial. I call to action! Let us speak for the dawn.

His presidency of the fraternity was just one of his many leadership roles. While growing up in Roanoke, Lawson had been barred from using the whitesonly YMCA facilities. In a 1938 speech to a meeting sponsored by the Harlem Labor Union, Lawson included the YMCA among white-dominated organizations that African Americans should not place their faith in. Many years later, though, he became active in the Washington, D.C., YMCA and served as chairman of its Board of Directors.

The national YMCA formally abolished racial discrimination in all of its branches in 1967. Lawson was elected national chairman of the YMCA in 1973.

THE LAWSONS AND THE KENNEDYS

Lawson met his match in Marjorie Alice McKenzie, a Pittsburgh native, who earned her undergraduate degree and a certificate of social work from U-M in the 1930s. She moved to Washington, D.C., for work and began taking night courses at the historically Black Robert H. Terrell Law School, where Lawson was a volunteer instructor.

Marjorie received her Terrell degree in spring 1939, and she and Lawson wed later that year at Riverside Church in New York, possibly the first African American couple to marry in the historic church. Marjorie joined the Lawson and Berry firm and participated in some of Belford’s civil rights cases. Her own practice focused primarily on real estate law and public housing issues. From 1941–1955, she wrote a weekly public affairs column for the Pittsburgh Courier

In the late 1940s, a white, Ivy League-educated lawyer got a job Marjorie had hoped for, on the implication that Marjorie’s Terrell degree was not up to par. This prompted Marjorie to earn a J.D. from Columbia in 1950, because “she never wanted her legal credentials challenged again.”

The Lawsons’ home on Logan Circle was a salon of sorts for Washington, D.C.’s Black civil rights and political activists, frequently hosting meetings and receptions. The house would later be designated a historic site on the district’s Civil Rights Tour.

Both Lawsons became actively involved in the senate and presidential campaigns of John F. Kennedy. Belford Lawson first crossed paths with U.S. Rep. Kennedy at the 1952 Democratic Convention. Four years later, that casual acquaintance developed into a genuine friendship and collaboration. Lawson was a delegate from Washington, D.C., at the 1956 convention—as well as the first African American to address the Democratic Party National Convention. He supported Kennedy’s bid for the vice-presidential nomination, even though the D.C. delegation was committed to Estes Kefauver. Kennedy’s bid failed, but he later asked for Lawson’s aid in his 1958 Senate reelection campaign.

Lawson did not want to leave his law practice at the time, but he recommended someone else to Kennedy: his wife. Marjorie would go on to work on Kennedy’s 1958 Senate campaign staff and was named director of his presidential campaign’s civil rights section, in which she was Kennedy’s primary liaison to Black political, religious, and women’s organizations. She did advance work and often traveled with the candidate. She was appointed to the D.C. Juvenile Court by President Kennedy in 1962, and President Johnson in 1965 named

her the U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Belford Lawson became an informal advisor to Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. He introduced Kennedy to many leaders in the African American community, in particular to editors and publishers from the Black press, and helped them overcome their initial skepticism toward Kennedy.

A SHININGBRILLIANT, RAY

Belford Lawson practiced law until retiring in 1977. He died February 23, 1985.

It is apt that his legacy lives on through APA’s Belford V. Lawson Oratory Competition, established in 1985. It is a tribute to his eloquence and the many speeches he delivered to APA chapters and civic groups across the country.

Lawson was memorialized with several pages of tributes in APA’s national magazine, The Sphinx. One fraternity brother recalled Lawson’s speech as APA president in 1946 as “a brilliant, shining ray to a new generation saying to the world in a loud, stentorian voice, ‘Yes, Alpha Phi Alpha and Black America, we have a future, to be coupled with our glorious past.’”

Marjorie Lawson (middle) was appointed to the D.C. Juvenile Court by President John F. Kennedy (right) in 1962.

Seeing Stars through the Clouds

For both astronomers and the public, predicting the weather was long an impossible dream. That is, until U-M’s Detroit Observatory trained a man who created something revolutionary: the weather forecast.

By Andrew Rutledge

CLEVELAND ABBE WAS WORRIED.

It was September 1, 1869, and Abbe was waiting for telegrams at the Cincinnati Observatory. It was the first day of his revolutionary new program that used a network of observers across the Ohio Valley to report on weather conditions in their areas.

By using the telegraph to collect meteorological reports from a vast area nearly instantaneously, Abbe could create the most accurate daily picture of the weather ever in the United States. Nothing like it had been attempted before.

He had arranged for 40 observers but, as the hours passed, no messages arrived. By nightfall, it looked like the program might be over before it started. Until—finally— there was one. Then another.

Two messages were enough for Abbe, who boldly issued his first weather report

the next day. It was the first such report in American history.

ABBE LOOKS UP

Abbe was born in New York City in 1838. An excellent student of mathematics and chemistry, he knew by the time he was a teenager that he wanted to make a career studying the stars. After he graduated from the Free Academy (the future City University of New York) in 1857, he wrote to every astronomer in the nation seeking a position and training.

Franz Brünnow, the first director of U-M’s own Detroit Observatory, wrote back and encouraged Abbe to come to Michigan, though he could not pay him. Abbe didn’t hesitate.

Once in Ann Arbor, Abbe supported himself by teaching engineering at U-M and the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan (now Michigan State University). But he spent all his free time studying astronomy at the Detroit Observatory. In 1860, a restructuring of U-M staff eliminated his position, forcing him to leave Michigan in search of work.

Abbe spent the following years seeking every opportunity to study astronomy he could find, even spending two years as a “supernumerary astronomer” at the Russian Imperial Observatory near St. Petersburg. In 1868, Abbe was offered

the position of director of the Cincinnati Observatory, but there was a problem: The Cincinnati Observatory was bankrupt. Undeterred, Abbe thought he might see a solution by solving a different astronomical challenge: predicting the weather.

WEATHER OR NOT

Astronomers have always worried about the weather. After all, from the time humans first looked skyward, they couldn’t see the stars if it was cloudy.

By the 1800s, astronomers’ understanding of how weather impacted their studies had expanded dramatically. Among their most important discoveries was that the viewing would be poor when the temperature changed, even if the skies were clear.

Light travels through hot and cold air at different speeds. When a cold front mixes warm and cold air, the mixed air causes light to bend—just like when light travels through water. As a result, objects seen in a telescope appear blurry or even in the wrong place entirely. Thus, when planning their studies, astronomers needed to know what the weather and temperature would be as precisely as possible.

PREDICTING THE RAINS

While at the Detroit Observatory, Abbe had been “impressed with the unsatisfactory state of our knowledge of atmospheric

refraction” and its impact on astronomy. And so when he arrived in Cincinnati, he was convinced that with “a proper system of weather reports much could be done for the welfare of man, and astronomy also could be benefited.”

Abbe came up with an idea. In return for donations, he would create a network of observers who would send him daily telegrams reporting the local temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover. Even more ambitiously, he would use those reports to not only summarize the weather but also predict what it would do next. In particular, he promised to provide notices of weather that would impact travel and warn farmers of floods or frost.

Donations poured in and Abbe launched his program on that nerve-wracking day in September 1869. Despite its slow start, an average 33 messages soon began arriving daily, steadily increasing the accuracy of his predictions.

With Abbe’s success, businesses around the country pressured Congress to create a similar national system. A bill quickly passed through Congress and was signed into law in early 1870. With that, the precursor to what would eventually become the

Abbe was brought in as chief meteorologist of the newfound national weather service and expanded his system across the eastern United States. Receiving daily telegrams from hundreds of observers, the agency published a “Weather Synopsis and Probabilities” three times a day. These began with a brief overview of conditions nationwide followed by the “probabilities” for future conditions. For example, on March 2, 1871:

Probabilities. Threatening and rainy weather will probably be experienced on Friday on the Atlantic and Lower Lakes, with fresh winds. Brisk winds on the Gulf and Upper Lakes, with clear weather in the Northwest.

At its height in the 1880s, 541 observation stations across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean provided detailed daily reports and forecasts to all 38 states. As the weather service’s leader, Abbe soon earned the nickname “Old Probabilities.”

The weather bureau’s forecasts were distributed by telegraph to all weather stations, which were required to print copies for display at their local post offices.

Forecasts were also spread using flags flown from prominent buildings in towns across the nation. One such building was

the Detroit Observatory, thanks to its third director, Mark Harrington.

A leading meteorological expert himself, Harrington provided daily weather observations and displayed weather flags from a pole mounted on the Observatory’s roof for the benefit of students and Ann Arborites. The Bentley has a massive collection of these daily reports, documenting the history of weather in Michigan.

Harrington would later become the head of the newly renamed Weather Bureau in 1891.

The Detroit Observatory continued submitting daily weather reports and posting warnings until the 1930s. Today, the Weather Bureau continues its work as the National Weather Service. At U-M, the study of the weather is no longer a focus of astronomers, but the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering conducts research on meteorology and cli

(Opposite page) In 1868, the Observatory had a roof-mounted anemometer to measure wind speeds and a pole that would eventually display weather flags.

(Bottom) The Observatory created daily weather records as a volunteer weather station for the Weather Bureau, which was then housed under the Army.

Language Lessons

What do

you do when the descriptions of archival collections are outdated, even racist? Or when the collections themselves contain harmful content? A new initiative at the Bentley is tackling a strategic, long-term fix.

By Lara Zielin

THE DESCRIPTION OF the black-and-white photo was buried in the Michigan Archaeological Society records’ finding aid and included three scant words: Native American chief.

Gideon Goodrich, archivist for archival processing at the Bentley, flagged the description as deeply lacking. Who was this “chief”? What was their story? How could the Bentley do better?

When Goodrich found the physical photo in the stacks, they turned it over to reveal a name: Blue Cloud. With help from Jakob Dopp, graphics division cataloger at U-M’s Clements Library, Goodrich uncovered that Blue Cloud was William Arapahoe, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, and was born around 1870 on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Known to the media as “Chief Blue Cloud,” Arapahoe performed in Wild West shows and music and dance acts from the Lakota Nation, often alongside other Lakota music performers.

Arapahoe died in Detroit in 1951.

Goodrich added this information to the finding aid—one of the primary tools for identifying what’s in a collection—and made notes about their updates. They also added language about how the collection contains descriptions of Indigenous lives and cultures in an archaeological context, described by primarily white archaeologists, and may contain offensive language as a result.

This kind of work is called reparative description, and the Bentley is among numerous archives revisiting the ways that people and collections have historically been described.

“We know that our older finding aids and catalog records include outdated, offensive terms that we no longer use,” says Olga Virakhovskaya, the lead archivist for collections management at the Bentley. The goal of the reparative description project is to ensure Bentley holdings are described respectfully and according to anti-racist inclusive principles.

Another pillar of the project is to add context to the finding aid when appropriate.

“For example, a finding aid could highlight a male faculty member’s accomplishments, but nothing is said about the people who were the subject of his work, or his wife, or female members of the research staff whose materials are also presented in his collection,” says Virakhovskaya. Such “archival silences,” whether intentional or not, highlight and glorify the achievement

of one group while downplaying or completely neglecting the role of others. “Identifying and naming all creators and subjects of records, and providing context about their roles in our finding aids, is a big part of reparative work,” says Virakhovskaya. There is also an opportunity to edit the finding aid when the collections themselves contain harmful language or images that need to be contextualized. Think violent pictures or racist documents. In this case, Goodrich says, the finding aid could be revised with a warning, or a label placed on the boxes. “It’s like a movie rating,” explains Goodrich. “It doesn’t explicitly spell out everything a researcher might see, but they know that if they use the collection, it could cause harm.”

A STRATEGIC APPROACH

Historically, finding aid descriptions in need of improvement have been brought to the attention of the archive by researchers. “Once we knew about it, we would take on the work of redescribing, reanalyzing, and editing our description,” says Virakhovskaya. “But it’s playing catch-up.”

Instead, Virakhovskaya and her team decided to take a different approach, working to create a comprehensive process for analyzing outdated descriptions and creating new practices that would allow the archive to get out in front of the descriptions.

In the new model, Virakhovskaya says, style guides could ensure consistent language and treatment from the moment the

COLLECTIONS

Bentley receives a collection. New policies could ensure collaboration with communities when the Bentley is not a subject expert. In the case of Arapahoe, for example, Goodrich reached out to an archivist for the Oglala Lakota tribe to ensure the accuracy of the new finding aid text—even though that type of collaboration, while a best practice, isn’t yet a mandatory process.

One change that’s already in place is that archivists like Goodrich, who organize and prepare collections for public use, are now hired full-time, instead of the previous temporary model. “Not having to train people every one or two years ensures we’re retaining the knowledge and skills to do the job well, and that there is time for the processing team to review public-facing materials,” says Goodrich.

“There may even need to be an acknowledgment that, say, an anthropologist stole objects or information from a local community,” says Goodrich.

In the meantime, smaller changes to collection descriptions will continue. “To get the systematic work done, we still have to do reparative work as we find it,” explains Goodrich. “I’m glad we are building a committee around it because we can delegate to each other. It’s an enormous task, and you can’t just hang it on one person.”

The new reparative description strategy will also need to account for updates

THIS KIND OF WORK IS CALLED REPARATIVE DESCRIPTION, AND THE BENTLEY IS AMONG NUMEROUS ARCHIVES REVISITING THE WAYS THAT PEOPLE AND COLLECTIONS HAVE HISTORICALLY BEEN DESCRIBED.

The reparative description initiative was recently highlighted in the University of Michigan’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 2.0 Plan, which outlined a roadmap for the ambitious work. Step one will be convening a committee that will tackle the years-long project in phases.

Virakhovskaya says that the committee will group finding aids for collections that are known to be harmful, and the groups will then be prioritized for review and reparative work. One group might be U-M collections, which would include the student organization Order of Angell, formerly Michigamua, which appropriated and disrespected Indigenous culture. The finding aid includes racist and harmful terminology, as does the collection itself. “It has to be completely redone,” says Virakhovskaya. Order of Angell might be an obvious suspect, so another task is to continue to find collections where “archival silences” persist.

moving forward. “Times change, and it doesn’t mean the language we choose today won’t be looked upon as problematic at some point,” says Goodrich. “I want to help create a process that’s inclusive from the start, while allowing us to make changes when necessary.”

This archived photo was labeled “Native American chief” until reparative description efforts recovered the full name of William Arapahoe, known as Chief Blue Cloud, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

An adult-education class brought Black history to life in a Depression-era Ann Arbor classroom.

By Sarah Derouin

IN THE BENTLEY LIBRARY, newspaper clippings pasted inside a scrapbook showcase the excellence of Black Americans. The yellowed paper features local athletes and future Olympians, scientists and scholars, and globally revered performers and artists.

The scrapbook was created by Leona McDonald, an Ann Arbor resident who was part of a Depression-era “Negro History” class for adults, held in the evenings at the Ann Arbor High School.

At the time, Black history was not part of the curriculum for high school students, and administrators at the Ann Arbor High School refused to hire any Black teachers. However, the school held adult education courses for the community on topics such as creative writing, aviation, and salesmanship. The classes were part of the New Deal, intended as a way of providing jobs and helping people learn new skills. Despite a history of federal funding for programs that largely benefited white men, the “History of the Negro Race” class received money for an instructor and was offered in the 1934–35 academic year.

BLACK HISTORY IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

One of McDonald’s archived scrapbook articles, titled Early Africans Had High Place in Civilization, was part of a

Teaching Black History in the Early 20th Century

pamphlet written by Carter Woodson.

A child of formerly enslaved parents, Woodson was the second Black American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, ASNLH (now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History) in 1915 because the contributions of African Americans had been “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who used them.”

Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926, with the goal of teaching schoolaged Black children the histories of African Americans. It was held in February to coincide with Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’ birthdays. Many of the early lessons were put together by Black teachers and librarians, with the help of

information from the Negro History Bulletin, produced by ASNLH.

Woodson’s article in McDonald’s scrapbook highlights overlooked achievements by early Africans, including the trial-byjury process, iron smelting, and animal domestication.

McDonald’s scrapbook also features content by actor Richard Berry Harrison. And for good reason: Mr. Harrison was McDonald’s uncle.

In 1930, Harrison received his big break, landing the role of “de Lawd” in The Green Pastures, a play that opened on Broadway. Harrison’s success gave him a platform to talk about issues of the day, including the rise of Black playwrights. In one article he noted that a Black playwright could only find success writing about “Negroid” themes, but also pointed out that Black authors were better positioned to tell their own stories. “[White playwrights] write about the Negro; but I think the Negro can do the job better. He knows the thoughts and the language, and he understands the ideals and aspirations of the race.”

Long after the class ended, McDonald continued to collect clippings over the next decades, including articles about musical performances of her son Ike (born in 1938) and news about historical landmarks and current events. These snippets of news were not glued into the pages of the book but were instead slipped between the pages.

The scrapbooks were donated to the Bentley by Hazel Fields Grant, McDonald’s niece, and are available to the public for research.

Sources for this story include: Saperstein, Miriam: “Negro History Class for Adults in Twentieth-Century Ann Arbor.” Carter G. Woodson profile: naacp.org.

COLLECTIONS

Leona McDonald’s archived scrapbook, compiled as part of a 1934–1935 community education class on Black history, showcases achievements in sports, service, the arts, and more.

“Archives Are for Everyone”

Meet Kate Donovan, the director of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Her early archival training was done at the Bentley, and she’s part of our new series about great archivists doing important work in the field.

By Katie Vloet

Hi, Kate! Tell us what you do.

I am the director of the Bancroft Library and also associate university librarian for special collections. My job is incredibly varied and diverse, and a lot of the work involves documenting California and the West. I try to get the message out that archives are for everyone and that the Bancroft is free and open to everyone. In that way, I spend a lot of time as an ambassador.

I also have a talented and dedicated group of colleagues here at the library with whom I work to build our collections. The collections at the Bancroft document two thousand years of human history and include rare books, archives, literary manuscripts, photographs, letters, oral histories, and more.

What is something archived at the Bancroft that fascinates you?

I am very lucky in that my own family history is in this library. The Bancroft has land grant files and maps that were used by Californios [Hispanic Californians who descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries] to justify their claims to land. We’ve done a great job of digitizing all of those files and maps, and some of the maps at the Bancroft belonged to my ancestors.

That’s very cool! It must be hard to pick just one thing. There are so many other things that fascinate me at the Bancroft. Among our literary collections are the papers of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the early papers from the City Lights bookstore [which he founded]. He is an early favorite poet of mine, and I love getting to see how he would illustrate a lot of his letters with little drawings.

Maybe my favorite thing in the library is both a space and collection: we have six printing presses. We also have a class about the history of the book that’s been taught for 40 years. I think it’s the best-kept secret in the Bay Area, and I’m determined to change that.

What is your connection to the Bentley?

I learned how to be an archivist at the Bentley. I was a student at

the School of Information, and it was working at the Bentley that formed the core of my archival values. I learned that archives are not about records per se; they are about people.

Do you have a memory that stands out from your time at the Bentley?

I was working with Nancy Bartlett [associate director of the Bentley], and we went to pack up a collection at a donor’s home. The donor’s husband was an extraordinary architect who had passed away. It was an incredibly moving experience; she was very emotional. That experience underscored for me the personal stories that are contained in archives and the profound responsibility we have as archivists in being stewards of the materials that document people’s work, lives, and legacies.

What do you wish more people understood about archives?

I wish people understood that archives are for everyone, and everyone has a story to tell with their own personal papers and archives. Archives are not the only mode of storytelling, but they’re an important one. Archives provide a vital—and often intimate—way of understanding the world and how we relate to one another.

After a U-M student was killed in 1890, a psychic visited town claiming to be able to name the murderer.

By Lara Zielin

JUNE MAGE FLED ON FOOT, fearing for his safety. On November 12, 1890, the young U-M law student ran from members of the state militia who had turned their weapons on a group of unarmed students.

In a letter to his friend William Joseph Fischer, Mage wrote that not everyone was as lucky as he was to escape. “One student who was struck with the butt end of the gun over the right eye died about five o’clock the next morning.”

That was Irving Dennison, a first-year student from Toledo.

His death caused an uproar in the student body—and beyond. Who was the militiaman who had struck him? A Michigan Daily headline described the assailant as “short

and thick-set.” One student testified that the murderer was a guard. “I think he had on a cap. I think he was in uniform.” But it wasn’t enough to lead to any initial arrests.

Then, on November 24, 1890, The Michigan Daily announced the arrival of Paul A. Johnstone. According to the paper, the “famous mind reader” would “give an exhibition on Thanksgiving Day,” during which he would “discover the murderer of Dennison.”

He would also, according to the paper, drive a coach and four horses blindfolded through the streets, and open a combination lock to any safe—also blindfolded.

The paper noted that Dr. Charles Gatchell would also be in attendance. A physician on the faculty of what was then U-M’s Homeopathic College of Medicine, Gatchell said he would be able to reveal Johnstone for the fraud he was and “expose him.”

The Daily didn’t report on what happened at the so-called mind-reading exhibition, but certainly no arrests were made immediately afterward. However, by May

The Michigan Daily covered the story of Irving Dennison’s brutal murder in 1890, and Paul Johnstone’s claim that he could solve it.

1891, the Columbus Daily Telegram reported that several men had been arrested for Dennison’s murder. Due to insufficient evidence, the Washtenaw County prosecutor eventually dropped all charges.

Johnstone, for his part, kept up his mind-reading act, even claiming to be able to find a hatpin hidden in the long, complex underground systems of Wind Cave, South Dakota. The stunt, performed in 1893, made headlines when Johnstone and his crew were lost for multiple days within the cave system. Accounts of the stunt varied widely, but some newspapers reported that Johnstone was, in fact, able to find the hatpin.

In the end, perhaps Dr. Gatchell’s skepticism had some influence: Johnstone became a medical doctor and practiced in Kansas City, Missouri, before his death in 1941.

Sources for this story include: June Brutus Mage collection. The Michigan Daily: November 15 and 24, 1890. McCormick, Dave: “The Forgotten Riot,” the Ann Arbor Observer, March 28, 2022. Farrell, Tom: “A Mind Reader, a Pin Head, and a Fool; The Story of ‘Professor’ Johnstone’s Visit to Wind Cave,” April 1988.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

This undated image of U-M’s radio broadcasting studio was taken by Mel Ivory, who for decades photographed the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and surrounding communities. His myriad photographs of daily life—from weddings to buildings to pets and much more—are now being digitized to help celebrate Ann Arbor’s bicentennial in 2024. Read more on p. 1.