– Hello, my name is Angela Dillard. I have the great honor of being the chair of the history department at the University of Michigan and a member of the Executive Committee of the Bentley Historical Library. And it… (audience applauding) Oh, yeah, (laughs) thanks.
And it is my very happy duty to call us to attention and turn the mic over immediately to President and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum, Dr. Neil A. Barclay. Thank you so much. (audience applauding) – Sorry, I was conversing with your president. (laughs) Hi, I am Neil Barclay.
I have the great privilege of being the president of the Charles H. Wright Museum here in Detroit. First of all, I wanted to thank you for allowing us to host the African American Student Project in our home and in your home, the Wright Museum.
I also wanted to thank some of my trustees who are here. I see Carolyn Andrew’s here. I see Richard Smith somewhere. Thank you all. And, of course, thank you Angela Dillard and President Ono, who you’ll hear from in a second. Our mission at the Wright is to open minds
And change lives through the exploration and celebration of African American history and culture. Hosting events like these are examples of a project that has explored the profound impact of African Americans on one of the nation’s great universities while celebrating their achievements and their impact on the world.
At the Wright, we lift up stories largely unknown to our patrons. Importantly though, these stories have significant resonance in the present moment. Our work is not just about artifacts and archival records of history, but about what that record tells us about the challenges and opportunities inherent in the complex political
And social climate of the present day. The Wright is more than a museum. It was a final resting place for some of our city’s most renowned citizens, Aretha Franklin, Rosa Parks, who lied in state where I stand today. It is a gathering place for individuals to deeply engage with each other
In ways that are enlightening and transformative. We hope that you will come back to the Wright again and often as we continue our service to communities, both the local and national, who understand and appreciate the profound impact of African Americans on cultures around the world. Thank you. (audience applauding)
And now, I’ll give you your president, (laughs) President Santa Ono. (audience applauding) – Thank you very much, Neil. Thank you everyone for being here in this really beautiful museum, and thank you for your commitment and everyone in this museum for opening minds and changing lives at this inspiring museum.
Not only is this rotunda magnificent, but the exhibitions of what, when you see them, will inspire you as well because they tell very, very important stories. And Angela, thank you as well for your dedication to this city and your leadership in our Department of History.
It really truly is an honor and privilege for everyone here at the University of Michigan to be with you tonight for each of us has a story to tell, questions that we’ve faced, achievements that we’ve earned, and challenges that we’ve overcome, and some challenges that we still have to overcome
As individuals, as a community, as a city, and we need to do that together. But to be honest, for far too long the University of Michigan, we haven’t told those stories or we haven’t told the whole story. And as a university, that’s the very first step,
Is to confront the truth and to be self-critical and to be committed to being ever better. And as an institution founded in Detroit, you have heard me say, and you’ve heard it written, that our commitment to Detroit must grow and we must be thankful to have roots in this great city
And this great state. So one of the first things that we have to say is that we as an institution did, in the past, exclude and segregated individuals because of their religion, race, or ethnicity, it’s well-documented, or through gender or sexual identity. And in doing so, we deprived those individuals
Of the very mission of educational institutions and what we at the University of Michigan set out to do. We stood in their way of achieving their dreams in our university, in our community, and the possibility of nurturing them. That is in our past, and it’s important for us to recognize that history.
That’s why, one of the two reasons, when I was being recruited here, I was so excited and so supportive of our Inclusive History Project and the work of the Bentley Historical Library. And I’ve had a chance to learn a lot about the university, both good and bad, through the tweets and exhibits
Of the Bentley Historical Library and the groundbreaking African American Student Project. The other reason, obviously, in terms of the Inclusive History Project is because my mentor, Earl Lewis, is a co-chair of that and he has forever inspired me because of his commitment to truth in the history of this nation.
This project takes a critical step towards acknowledging and sharing the experiences of those often overlooked by their alma mater. Even more, it is a rich resource of the struggles confronted by those who went before us in each and every one of our schools, their sacrifices, their aspirations and achievements,
Their experiences told through their stories that we must take time to listen to because only through that can we learn. And we have so many stories to tell, not just within the campus walls, but throughout the nation and around the world. We should all learn from our mistakes. There’s poet, Robert Hayden,
The first African American to hold the position of US Poet Laureate from 1976 to 1978. And then there’s the story of Alfred Pelham, who served as the Chief Financial Officer for the City of Detroit in Wayne State University. And then there’s Cornelius Henderson, the second African American to earn an engineering degree
From the University of Michigan. He was also a Chief Structural Engineer for the Canadian side; that makes me happy being dual citizen; of the Ambassador Bridge, what makes it really easy for me to go to Windsor. The names of these outstanding individuals, along with those of other University of Michigan alumni, are also inscribed on the Ring of Genealogy on the floor of this very rotunda. I’m proud to see them here. And I’m also proud of all the African Americans that are at the University of Michigan right now,
Including my mentor, Earl Lewis, who is one of the first members of the University of Michigan to win the Presidential Medal of Humanities from the President of the United States of America. Let’s hear it for Earl. You see, the names that you see in this rotunda, names of individuals who’ve achieved despite discrimination, racism, and struggles, they’re collected through the African American Student Project for self-discovery, intellectual honesty, but even more so that we remember that we achieve and we excel, and together we soar higher than we can soar alone.
That’s why it’s an honor for me to be here with you, for all of us to be together this evening. We have a story to tell very loud. That story is our history. And there’s no better way than to end these remarks with the beauty of music.
It’s my pleasure to introduce Betty Kelly. I hope Betty Kelly’s here, a student from our School of Music, Theater and Dance. Is she here? There she is, who will perform “Between Worlds,” which was composed by University of Michigan alumnus, Carlos Simon. Let’s hear it for Betty Kelly. (audience applauding)
Betty, come on up here, or can you play down there? Here is Betty. – What a wonderful performance. Let me also take a moment… Oh yeah, absolutely. (audience applauding) Let me also take a minute to acknowledge our live stream audience, people who are live streaming from around the city, around the country and on campus with watch parties at the Detroit Center
And at the Trotter Multicultural Center on campus. We’re really happy to have them with us. Many of those watch parties were sponsored by organizations and units around the campus who are helping to support, recruit the next generation of African American alums from the University of Michigan.
And we thank them so much for everything that they’ve done to make this possible virtually, as well as in-person. So, now we are gonna have to work together to do a quick set change. So please join me in pointing towards the Farnsworth entrance. Everybody point. No, really. There you go.
Those of you able to take the stairs are gonna make your way downstairs to the community center, where we’re gonna continue our program. For those of you who need the elevator, it is in this direction. And we have about seven minutes to stay on schedule. – Did everybody survive the set change, the change of scenery and the change of venue? I think we’ve got quite a few of the people made it down, so I think we’ll get started down here with this part of the program. So I wanna say welcome.
I wanna thank Neil Barclay and the Wright staff for opening the museum up to us, President Ono for those wonderful opening remarks, and thanks to Betty Kelly for that fantastic musical performance. What a great way to start our program. It’s really gratifying to see such a big audience here.
I’m thrilled by the turnout. And greetings to those joining us virtually. I’m Brian Williams, an archivist at the Bentley Historical Library. For those unfamiliar with the Bentley Library, it serves as the archives for the University of Michigan, containing historical records of the university going back to 1817. I’ve had the honor of leading
The Bentley’s African American Student Project since it began seven years ago now. I’m really excited to talk about this project and our research. This project means a great deal to me personally and I’m just really excited to get to talk about it. It’s really heartwarming to see so much interest in this room,
People that have been supporters. So what is the African American Student Project? The African American Student Project honors the thousands of African American students and their lasting legacy at the University of Michigan. The project website features a collection of resources, stories, data visualizations, and a database.
So the heart of the project is a living database that’s continually growing. We’re regularly updating the database as we learn new names and stories. The searchable database currently contains names and information on 5,883 African American students who attended the University of Michigan from 1853 to 1870. This evening, I’m pleased to announce
That we’ll be expanding that database to include all of the 1970s. Several alumni rightly pointed out, why did we stop at 1970, (audience laughing) the year of the first Black Action Movement? By expanding the scope to the whole ’70s, we can take a deeper look at the impact of BAM.
We can look at enrollment, we can see where the students came from, but most importantly, well, we will know who they were, who you are, their names. We’ll know something about everybody, every student that was here then. So as we commit to identify all of the African American students enrolled in the 1970s,
I ask for your help. As I said, this is a living and growing database. We need your help to identify those who are not in our database. We need classmates, friends, relatives, and we need your help to correct anything that we might have wrong in the database. We really wanna get this right.
But perhaps most significantly, this project enables us to move beyond the firsts. We tend to get stuck on the first, repeatedly celebrating them as institutional achievements and markers on diversity timelines. We point to 1853, when Samuel Codes Watson became the first African American student to enroll.
Watson entered the medical school in the fall of 1853 and apparently caused no great uproar. He had a light complexion and may have gone largely unnoticed by his classmates. But we also know that the next African Americans who enrolled in the midst of the Civil War encountered resistance and discrimination.
Alpheus Tucker enrolled in 1863 but was quickly forced out. His classmate, John Rapier, finished the term but soon left the university. And focusing on firsts obscures others. A case in point is William Henry Fitzbutler, the first African American to graduate from the medical school. Fitzbutler enrolled at the university in October, 1871,
And earned his medical degree in 1872. Overlooked is Oliver Madison Atwood, who enrolled in September, 1871, a month before Fitzbutler, but didn’t earn his degree until 1873. Atwood and Fitzbutler were classmates, but Atwood is obscured. This project enables us to move beyond the first and reasonably to determine who might have been
The 100th African American student to enroll, or the 1000th or anywhere in between. There are many ways to use this database. It can be searched by field of study, school or college attended, degree type. It can be used to find hometowns or home states to see,
For example, how many students came from Alabama, Ann Arbor or Detroit. Database can be queried by years of attendance or enrollment in a given year. The database also tracks membership in campus organizations such as honor societies, fraternities, and sororities, when known. Working with colleagues in the university library, we created data visualizations,
Including interactive map plotting local addresses where African American students lived in Ann Arbor. Local addresses are a very important part of this project. The interactive map shows housing concentrations that help illustrate the history of segregation in Ann Arbor. Graphs on the website show yearly enrollment and enrollment by gender.
We plan to add more data visualizations, including a national map showing hometowns and home states and other graphs and charts. We’re compiling autobiographies of African American alumni. The website features information about autobiographies and memoirs by James L. Curtis, James Earl Jones, Billy Taylor, Willis Patterson, Carol Simpson, Gwendolyn Calvert Baker.
Betty Brown-Chappelle has an autobiography in our collection. This is where I ask for your help again. Let us know if you’re aware of autobiographies and biographies. We wanna know about ’em, we want to add ’em to this project. So now I’m gonna step back and say something about why we started this project.
So for most of its history, the University of Michigan didn’t keep track of students by race. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that they required by federal requirements to start tracking race. That meant that we couldn’t reliably answer questions like how many African American students were enrolled in 1920 or 1945?
So in 2016, on the eve of the university’s bicentennial, we began to compile a list of African American students one name at a time, we’re just building this a name at a time. The early days of the project involved a lot of basic work, looking at class graduation photos
And turning every page of every volume of the Michigan NC yearbook going back to 1897 looking for African American students. We compiled a spreadsheet of names and worked to verify race using census records and documents in the archives. We searched newspapers like “The Michigan Daily” and found additional names and occasional benchmarking data.
A 1912 article in “The Michigan Daily” noted that Michigan was third in African American enrollment, behind only Oberlin College and the University of Kansas. The article stated that there were 39 African American students enrolled at Michigan that year, including the detail that only only one of them was female. Because of this project,
We now know the names of those 39 students. Our search expanded other African American newspapers like “The Michigan Chronicle,” “The Chicago Defender,” “The Pittsburgh Courier.” We found frequent mentions of Michigan and gathered more names and added them to our ever-growing list. The NAACP’s magazine, “The Crisis,” published an annual educational issue
Highlighting college graduates. Those issues yielded additional names. In the archives, we even found a letter from W. E. B. Du Bois sent to Michigan asking for names, but Michigan often responded by stating they didn’t keep track of students by race and couldn’t help. We realized that for postgraduate degree recipients,
Michigan published the names of the previous colleges and universities where they got degrees. We found hundreds of graduate students by systematically searching every HBCU across commencement programs. Naturally, we consulted with African American alumni and received helpful advice and many names. Alumni from the Divine Nine fraternities and sororities have been wonderful partners,
And many of our biggest supporters are here in the audience. I wanna take a moment to highlight the advice and encouragement that this project has received from Dr. Richard Smith. He’s our most enthusiastic supporter and has opened many doors for this project. Thank you, Rick. (audience applauding)
Now, the Bentley holds an extensive collection of alumni records, including semester enrollment cards filled out by students each term. Let’s see if I… This, yeah, there we are. The card in this slide is one filled out by Alice James. She’s the mother of Elizabeth James, a U of M alum,
And longtime advisor to the Black Student Union. I’m sure many of you know her. This is… The type of card we found in the archives were invaluable to this project. The information on the cards included local address, hometown. In some years, the cards asked about prior colleges attended, membership in fraternities or sororities,
And other family members that attended. That information just was so essential to our project. That information on other family members that attended revealed these multi-generational connections at Michigan that we had no idea about when we began. There’s some really amazing legacies that this project has helped us find.
Our decision to record local addresses brought into focus the segregated nature of housing in Ann Arbor. African American students were discouraged from living in the dormitories, forcing them to find housing in Ann Arbor’s African American community. We noticed that addresses in the first half of the 20th century
Tended to repeat with great frequency, addresses like 1017 Catherine, 210 Glen, 144 Hill, 1136 Catherine, 1102 East End Street. Starting in the 1950s, some addresses like 1702 Hill Street, site of the Kappa Alpha Psi house, became significant. Armed with these key addresses, we were able to search student directories
To find additional names of students living at those addresses. We learned more about the significance of those houses and the people who ran them. The house at 1102 East End Street was a boarding house for African American women owned by the university. Alice Benjamin was a house mother.
Last week, I met Alice Benjamin’s granddaughter and got to learn a little bit more about this house and her father, who was the first African American member of the marching band. (audience chattering) This house at 1102 was established by the university shortly before the new women’s dormitory, Mosher-Jordan, opened.
Nearly 300 African American women lived at 1102 East End Street between 1930 and 1946, when it was torn down. Esther Dickson ran the house at 144 Hill Street. The house still stands at the corner of Hill and Green, a couple blocks east of Main Street.
Our database reveals that between 1902 and the 1950s, more than 250 African American students lived in the Dickinson house. Her son, William, earned a medical degree from Michigan in 1911 and was one of the charter members of the Epsilon chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.
In 1921, we found nine men living at 144 Hill formed a club that’s called The Annex Club. The Annex Club was the probationary chapter of the Phi chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Esther Dickinson house was listed in the Green Book. It was the only house listed in Ann Arbor,
Along with two hotels. So the African American Student Project features stories about housing, including the Dickson House and other prominent sites like 1136 Catherine known as the Bee House, and Oxford Housing, where members of Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta lived in the late 1960s. As our research progressed,
We learned more about the struggle for inclusion. We pieced together more about individual students and their stories, like Marjorie Franklin’s fight to integrate Cousins Hall in 1924 after she was refused space based on the color of her skin. She eventually succeeded, with the help of lawyer, Oscar Baker, a proud African American alumnus
Who was disappointed by his alma mater, but pushed it to do better. We learned about E’Dora Morton, the daughter of Dr. Moses Morton, a 1918 medical school graduate, who in 1931, having to live first in a boarding house, she became the first African American woman to live in Mosher-Jordan dormitory.
These stories and others help situate the African American Student Project within the inclusive history work that the university is embarking upon now. Now, I talked about segregation and the struggle for inclusion, but I also wanna emphasize that this project also lifts up stories of success. The database currently identifies 15 students
Who were in Phi Beta Kappa honors, starting with George Ellison in 1910, and Joseph Henry Bruce Evans in 1912. Despite encountering barriers, these students overcame them and succeeded and helped to create opportunities for those who would follow. This project has led to rediscoveries of exceptional men and women.
The website highlights some of these exceptional students. As I conclude, I wanna reiterate my request for your help to identify new names and stories as we keep this project growing. So we worked to build out the 1970s, we especially wanna hear from those of you who were here in the ’70s.
At the end of this evening’s program, after we’ve talked to, heard our panel talk to lived experience, you’re invited to return to the rotunda, where project team members will be on hand to demonstrate the database and help with searches and, at the three monitor stations that were showing images upstairs earlier.
They’ll also be on hand to collect any information that you wanna offer. There’s also contact information on the project website. Under the Contact tab, there’s a way to reach us. And for those of you, like me, who are a little more old school, we’ve produced a special publication celebrating the project and- It draws from some information on the website and even includes a detachable form inside where you can mail us information, so we’re really going old school. So look for that on your way out this evening. But now, let’s turn to the lived experience with our panel of distinguished alumni.
It’s my pleasure to introduce Wendy Woods, who will be serving as the moderator tonight for our panel. Wendy Woods is a former Ann Arbor City councilwoman and has served as chair of the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission, the Transportation Commission, and the Ordinance Revisions Committee. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she attended Wittenberg University
Before completing her education at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Wendy recently retired as associate director of the Michigan Community Scholars Program, a nationally recognized living learning program at U of M which focuses on social justice, community service, diversity and civic engagement.
She’s also a member of the Ann Arbor alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated and the Ann Arbor Summer Symphony. She married her college sweetheart, Ronald Woods, and in 2020, they celebrated 50 years of marriage, so. So I’ll turn it over to you, Wendy. – Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be a part of this event this evening here at the Charles H. Wright Museum, and also just to be here to be able to talk about our beloved institution, the University of Michigan. Let me just say that over the past few weeks,
I’ve had a chance to look at the website that was just talked about, and there is a voluminous amount of data there detailing all of the empirical kinds of things about many of us. The data, the years, where did we live, those sorts of things. But now, we’re gonna turn to
A very important part of this evening, and that is to hear the voices of three of the students who bring these numbers to life. Let me also just say, just to loosen up the crowd a little bit, I’m glad they weren’t keeping records on who left Ann Arbor with parking tickets
’cause that, you know. (audience laughing) I have to say that as a member of city council and you know, we’ll go on for that. Let me now also introduce our panelists for this evening, and their biographies are also in your pamphlets. So I’m not gonna read everything,
But I’m just gonna hit a couple of highlights. First joining us this evening is Elizabeth Youngblood. And Elizabeth, if you wanna come on up. Do you prefer Liz or Elizabeth or? – I tend to be a whole name person. – Whole name person. I like that. Okay.
– But I’m known in this room as Lizzie. – Oh, Lizzie. Okay. (laughs) She was born and educated in Detroit. And after graduating from the University of Michigan, she completed her Master’s of Fine Arts and Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She’s designed for several local architectural firms
And has been a faculty member at the U of M Ann Arbor’s campus, the Stamp School of Art and Design. Let’s give her a warm round of applause. Our second panelist is Mr. Keith Cooley. And he grew up in Pontiac, and he is a third-generation University of Michigan alum, so I’m sure he’s gonna tell us a lot about that. Both of his parents attended the university, as did his grandfather, and he was… Mr. Cooley was the first African American gymnast at the University of Michigan and was part of the 1966 Big Ten championship team. (audience applauding) Go Blue! And our third panelist is Dr. Lawrence Crawford.
Dr. Crawford, do you wanna come on up? He was raised in Saginaw, Michigan. And he followed his mother, Lucille Bryant, to the University of Michigan. So we have another second generation person here. I’m very fond of him because in 1983, he would be elected Saginaw’s third African American mayor. So you’ve got a couple politicians in the group as well. (laughs) (audience applauding) And in the 1990s, he was chairman of Delta Dental and co-founded Vitech USA. That’s the first manufacturing business
Located in the Detroit empowerment zone. I’m sure… Let’s also welcome him to the panel as well. So I think each of us has a microphone there on our seats, right? And I’m gonna sit down as well, but we wanna just start off the questions a little bit. And also, is Angela here? Angela? Oh there you are. Angela, stand up, because Angela helped… Angela Dillard, as they mentioned upstairs,
Is the chairwoman of the history department here, but she has done an amazing job of getting us together. And it wasn’t as hard as herding cats, but I know that, (audience laughing) I know she’s glad today is here, so thank you so much, Angela. (audience applauding)
So what I’m going to do to start it off is just to ask if each one of you would mind just telling us a little bit about your own personal history here at the, well, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, particularly for those of you who had parents
Who had attended Michigan. My husband and I have five kids. We found it really hard to tell them anything. They would not follow us across the street, unless- (audience laughing) So how’d you arrange that? Whoever wants to go first. – Sure. – Ladies first. – Well, I am not a legacy at U of M, I am a first gen-er. My sister and I are first generation to go to college. So I was just a very fortunate person. My sister wanted to go, we’re a divided family, she ended up going to Michigan State, But I love her anyway. (laughs) So I was just… We were part of the first affirmative action class, I think. And I was fortunate enough to come up to Michigan with a cohort of people that I went to high school, church, and even junior high school with, so I was good to go.
I felt very comfortable at U of M. – Keith? – Yes. So before I begin, a note to Angela. Thank you to Angela who stuck with me. When she called and I said, “I don’t have $10,000 to give anybody (audience laughing) to have my name,
To talk to me about my name being up.” She said, “No, you don’t have to do that. We got this taken care of.” (audience laughing) So thank you so much for hanging in there with me. – Wait a minute, she gave you only 10? She gave me 20, but go ahead. – Wait a minute, I had zero. (audience laughing) – I have been, you know, very fortunate to stand on the shoulders of a grandfather and a father and a mother and an aunt who came here to school starting back in 1925.
My grandfather forged a college diploma and came and presented himself to the University of Michigan Medical School. Was admitted, graduated, and practiced medicine for 30 years In Atlantic City, New Jersey. (audience applauding) My father was kicked outta school for outing coffee, what do you call it? Counter, at lunch counter. – Lunch counter. – On campus. He was kicked out for being a communist because they were following the Jim Crow laws.
He and his friends figured out how to get around that, understand what was going on and get them arrested. He did get back in, but I will tell you that those are the kinds of stories that I felt like I kind of had to live up to, you know, when I came here.
So I stand on the shoulders of giants, my mom, my dad, and my aunt and grandfather. – That’s awesome. (audience applauding) – You know, I come from Saginaw. And in the 1940s in Saginaw, every black person there either worked for General Motors, in the foundry or was in jail, I think. Well, my mother came here to the University of Michigan, and I’m gonna tell you, that lady was brilliant, and so were all her doggone of University Michigan friends. My mother read a book a day, a night or whatever, but she read down the middle of the page.
You know, I’d get cross-eyed trying to follow her, and she was turning pages fast and she comprehended it all. She spoke five languages, and it was… I always teased her ’cause I said, “You know, Mom, the family put their pennies together and sent you to University of Michigan,
You came back with me,” so. (laughs) But the University of Michigan transformed my family from poverty to middle class, because my mother went to school because her brother ran a bank. Now, for you young folks that don’t understand what a bank is, you know, that’s the numbers bank. Don’t say nothing bad about the numbers around me, okay? I’m just gonna tell you, my family was what they called on the wrong side of the law. But because of the University of Michigan, each generation following my mother came in a different way. I came here, try to remember everybody, my brother, Gregory,
My sister, Carla, and my sister, Kathleen, I think you all know her as Kathleen Wilson-Thompson. – Oh, yeah. (audience applauding) – I think she was head of the Alumni Association for four or five years, or something like that. But what you don’t know about her is that she endowed a scholarship in LS&A
Because mama used to always tell us that the one thing she wished she had done was to be able to travel and use these languages that she had. And Kathy endowed a scholarship for her, for a student in LS&A to be able to travel abroad. We have given back.
Now, our family was very unique, and the effect of University of Michigan on Saginaw, Michigan is unbelievable because my mother, all of her kids went to University of Michigan. Her brother, the one that ran the bank, all of his kids went to Michigan State. (laughs) But I was followed by my mother’s sister’s son, Anthony Chambers, TC to the brothers at Epsilon. Yeah, that’s my little brother. And it goes on, because I met my wife here at the University of Michigan. She was in library science. And the only reason she dated me,
Because the dental school had the best library on campus, And she couldn’t get in that place without me. Our two sons, Alan Crawford and, what’s that other boy’s name? Larry Crawford Jr? (audience laughing) Yeah. Yeah. Both of them went and graduated from the University of Michigan. But the one thing I wanna say to all of the black students here is I’ve done a lot of crazy stuff in my life.
I heard ’em talking about “The Michigan Chronicle,” “The Chicago Defender,” “The Pittsburgh Courier,” and “The Memphis Tri-State Defender.” Well, you know, me and five or six brothers in Detroit bought that organization. That’s Real Times Media, and we still have it, okay? (audience applauding) And another Michigan brother, Dr. William Pickard,
Is a member of our group. Look, let me tell you something. This Michigan influence is unbelievable. I did a joint venture in Mississippi in 2008. Lord have mercy, it was one week after Obama got elected. The folks there were selling out all the guns and ammunition at Walmart.
And I got in there and I met the provost from Ole Miss, we’d gone to Michigan together. (laughs) This brother was right here in Ann Arbor with me, had a PhD in Pharmacy or something like that, he told me, but you know, I just didn’t know they had that. Well, I was amazed to see, and everybody here should be so proud because in my time in the South, I have…
I was in the Dean’s advisory board at Meharry, just like I, dental school, just like I am here. There were so many professors at Meharry from the University of Michigan, and we developed a pipeline sending undergraduate Meharry students to the dental school here. But the reach is spectacular.
I said enough, but I just wanna tell you. (laughs) – Thank you, and I think we’ve sort of started to touch on some areas that we wanna talk about, academics is one thing. Would you all mind just telling us a little bit about how did you make it? I used to be an academic advisor at the University of Michigan.
One of the things I would tell students was, “You got here, you deserve to be here. Don’t feel… Don’t let anyone let you think that you don’t deserve to be here. And also, don’t forget about everything that your parents taught you to get you here. If you prayed, then continue to pray.
If you did other things, had a bank, you know, (audience laughing) do that as well.” But… (chuckles) But would you mind just sharing with us a little bit about academics? And also, I imagine perhaps there were not a lot of folks that looked like us in the School of Art,
Or am I mistaken about that? – You’re not mistaken. There were not a lot, but I can think of three in our class, one of whom I came up with, as I mentioned. We had a large cohort. I’d gone to high school with her, Leslie Strong she was then,
Leslie Williams most of you know now. So we went… And Helen, who was from Ohio or something, I can’t remember. But at least there were those three. I remember the- – Helen Haynes. – Helen Haynes, thank you. Who said that? Oh you did. Okay, thanks Juanita. I didn’t know you knew her.
So anyway, there were the three of us, but I will… You know, the long story short, I never had a problem being the only one in the room. I hear how concerned people are about that now, but I have to say, my mother threatened us (audience laughing) when we were little
Because, you know, we’d end up places, in a class or something, and we might be the only black person and she said… I told my nephew this the other day and he chuckled. She said, “If I find out that you’re afraid to sit next to some little white girl,
You’re gonna have to talk to me.” And so the point was, the way that I have always taken that is that they had prepared us. They had educated us as to how they thought we should behave, they had made us presentable, they had done all the things.
There was no reason for us not to think we belonged there, whether we were the only one or not. So I certainly wasn’t the only one. Again, all the black folks pretty much hung out together. Not everybody, but most did. So, you know, I kind of had a ready-made group.
I didn’t have to meet a bunch of new people, even though I did. I had a bunch of friends, and I roomed with a friend from high school and, Trunetta Bradford she was then, and Leslie was across the hall, ’cause we couldn’t choose between each other, so we made the school choose.
But they put her across the hall and we had all gone to high school together, and we’re all in the same curriculum at cast, so. – Do you remember which residence hall you were in? – We were in Bursley. – Bursley. – We were on North Campus. – Okay.
– We have any others here from the Bursley family? Anybody? – Here. – Oh wow. Wow. – On that bus, on those winter mornings. – Yes. – Yes. ‘Cause the School of Art wasn’t on North campus then, so we had to bus it into main campus. – Okay. Thank you. How about you, Keith? – For the kid that was told by his guidance counselor
He was too stupid to go to college and would end up working at Pontiac Motors, I ended up at 6720 Gomberg house with nine or 10 other football players who, we eventually lived together. I was an engineer. And I tell people that I could walk to my engineering classes each week
And count each student that I saw that looked like me, and at the end of the week, I had fingers left over on one hand. But I’m a little bit like Elizabeth. I never had a problem. There’s not a person I met that wasn’t friendly, didn’t wanna help out, didn’t want to sit down and figure out how to work out problems together. Some of those folks are still people I see today.
I go over to Casey’s for a burger and a beer with one of my friends in the nuclear engineering department who actually ran it for a while. So I think things went well enough where if I, as long as I was willing to reach out to others, whether they were black or white,
Korean, Japanese or whatever, they were willing to reach back. And we had fun, we had a lot of fun. – Good. And being in dental school, did you need to have study groups? And can you tell us a little bit about that though? – Okay, and we’re not supposed to talk about anything
From 1970 on. I didn’t go to dental school till 1970. – Okay. Okay. – And those were the worst years of my life. (laughs) And I’m supposed to stay positive. – Okay. – So… Okay? So we ain’t gonna talk about dental school. – All right. – ‘Cause I see Marilyn out there, you know. I was like the other dumb jocks at the University of Michigan. We had a tutor for everything we didn’t know how to spell.
And Marilyn, after she got through tutoring me in microbiology, she said, “Hell, if that idiot can do this, I’m going dental school.” (everyone laughing) But no, when I came here in 1967, it was a… (sighs) There were five black students from Saginaw that came here in 1967.
And I lived in West Quad in Winchell house. And I’m gonna tell you, it was my first night on campus, scared the bejeebers out of me. I walked out, I didn’t know anybody. And I walked over toward the diag, and all of a sudden, this herd of people came running at me and none of ’em had on any clothes. They called it streaking. I mean, I was a little boy from Saginaw, I was scared to death. (audience laughing) They were crazy down here. And on, I wanna make sure I get this right, on Friday, the SDS bombed all the banks. That’s why in Ann Arbor ain’t no windows
On none of the banks in Ann Arbor on campus, ’cause the SDS broke all the windows out the bank every Friday. That was a ritual. And they fought with the ROTC students. – The SDS club? – Yeah. At the SDS. – Students for a Democratic Society. – Yes. Yes.
They were actually formed here, I think Sinclair was here. – Right. – And we were in a amazing political upheaval because the Vietnam War was going on and the pressure to make sure the university didn’t send no bad report on you to the draft board was for real.
I’m telling you, they had a little underground list of which professors to take so that they would not flunk you. (laughs) I mean they really, they were anti-war professors and they would not flunk you and… But all the black students spoke to each other. I think when I first got here, it wasn’t 450 or something like that, but something like that. But we all spoke to each other and we were involved in different… There were only four fraternities and sororities. There was the Alphas, the Kappas, the Deltas and the AKAs.
When I first came here, that was it. But we were all black, and what was going on around the country affected us here. Nothing affected me like the death of Martin Luther King, I mean… And I’m gonna tell you, it was a whole bunch of white people out there
Grieving with us about what happened to Martin Luther King, and there were strange coalitions formed. And I learned at the University of Michigan right then, relationships, relationships, relationships. If you don’t have relationships, you’re gonna have some problems. The rules are to keep you out. If they know you, ain’t no rules, so.
And that has served me in life and when I got into politics and I had to build a coalition, because we are a minority in the United States, we can’t make the majority do anything, we just kinda changed the direction of the boat, and you need allies to do that.
I learned that right here, watching how things worked because, does anybody in here remember Opal Bailey? – Yes. – She was our first black homecoming queen here at the University of Michigan. They treated her like crap. – Was a good friend. – Hey, they treated her like crap.
And you know, they were all talking about how Obama dropped the mic. When it came time for her to crown the next queen, she dropped the mic. (laughs) I mean, but she was truly mistreated. And you know, they wanna say, “Well, they were booing her on the football field
Because they didn’t let women on the football field.” Women couldn’t be in the band. Women couldn’t be cheerleaders. And they said that’s the real reason they booed her. Then 10 minutes later, the Varsity M Club would carry Doc Losh, not only on the field,
But across the field at the 50-yard line to her seats, because Doc Losh taught astronomy. A is for athletes. B is for boys. And C is for- – Coheads. – Yeah, and C is for Coheads, if you’re stupid enough to come in here and… Oh, the line to get in her classes,
Oh my God. But… So I don’t buy this stuff about they were booing Opal ’cause she was on the football field, because they were standing up going crazy about Doc Losh. And he knows what I’m talking about. – And just really quickly, Opal was a really good friend,
Dated one of my roommates, Carl Ward. But my father had Doc Losh when he was here, and I had her when I was here. (audience laughing) – See, you had to have some juice to get in her class. – Yeah, you had, you know, you had to have that athletic thing on ’em.
I went over there and told ’em I was running track or still playing baseball or something. (laughs) – Well, I wanna do a time check here, I think. Are we okay? So we’re okay? Well, so one of the things, and I can see that we have some folks in the audience
Probably who’d like to ask questions, so why don’t, if it’s all right, I’d like to do that. And perhaps do they… Will the videographer be able to catch them or do they need to come up to the front or do I need to just pass the mic? – No, pass the mic.
– Oh, okay. Thank you. So does anyone have any questions for our panelists? Yes. – So first of all, I’d just like to acknowledge Elizabeth, who I know for a fact was in that youngest class that was part of the Black Action Movement. (laughs) And I’d really just like to ask you
To talk a bit about your personal experiences being part of that movement. – Well- – Elizabeth, the mic. – Oh, I forgot. I forgot. I remember the consternation. I think we were sophomores that year. – We were still freshmen. – Were we still freshmen? Okay. And we were pledging Delta. (laughs)
I was… Anyway. And I just remember a lot of consternation. I remember there was, there was just a lot of agitation going on, and I always felt like I had to make these choices between going to the demonstrations or going to class. And our classes were really long.
Our classes were, met in four-hour blocks. So, I just wish I could have done more, frankly. I chose to miss some classes but not many, ’cause I heard my parents’ voices in my ears. But yeah, I just, I would’ve loved to done more. And I just really felt that it was terrific
That the people who did participate and sacrifice their classes, that they had the courage to do it, you know, and were able to do it. Yeah, that’s kind of where I am on that. And we pledged, so crazy time. – Can I? Can I? – Yeah.
– Do you remember Don Goodwin or Al Dobbins? Were they part of engineering- – I remember the names, but I don’t remember the faces. – Okay. All right. – They- – ‘Cause we were across the street from the engine, you know, the school of-
– Yeah, they came and- – And architecture was there. – They came to strike at the engineering school. And I was one of their counselors. I just said, “Pss, what do you want?” And they said, “We want the 10% pledge.” And said, “You got it.” They struck us anyway. (laughs)
– No, see that might’ve been a difference if there had been a black administrator in the School of Art. – Well, they- – You know, and I had said, “What do I do?” I might’ve gotten some support like that. – They still had to strike
Because they felt that if they gave in at that point, it wouldn’t have the same gravitas across the campus. And we understood that, the dean of the engineering school understood that, I understood that too. But it was a real… You’re right, it was a real rough time. – Yeah.
– Did you say Don Goodwin? – Yeah. – That was an old buddy, one of my closest friends. – Oh my goodness. – We pledged together. – Oh, that’s great. – (laughs) He… – Small world. – Yeah, Don and I- – Don was the vice president at Chrysler.
– Yes, he was, lives down in Orlando now. Great guy. – Yeah. – Let me just also say in terms of BAM that that is something that, I think, is gonna be discussed perhaps in another iteration of a panel like this, mainly because they asked us to just go up to the 1970s.
But I’ve got… (laughs) My husband’s out there, it was his first year of graduate school in 1969, and we recently had had a set of twin boys, and I remember him pushing the boys in their stroller down State Street in a marching line. So everybody got involved in BAM.
And just to talk a little bit about the Ann Arbor community, I’d like to see if you all could just talk about what kind of a relationship you were able to forge with the strong black community that was actually and still exists in Ann Arbor. Sometimes, students think
When they come to University of Michigan, “Well, I gotta go to Detroit if I wanna have a black experience.” And you know, you have to kind of take ’em aside and say, “Hey, black people are everywhere, you know? Don’t be thinking that we’re just a spook
Sitting by the door that you can just ignore. We are here.” And so it’s important to talk about that as well. Keith, did you wanna say something? – I don’t know how many folks were here. I graduated ’67, but in those years, those middle years as the ’60s,
I got my hair cut over on Anne Street. – (chuckles) Yep. – You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? – I know what you’re talking about. – And if you had a question about anything black going on in Ann Arbor, you’d go in there and talk to those folks,
They’d let you know what was happening. – That’s right. – That’s right. – From the Golden Feeneys, the bell and all the rest. It was great. – Yes. – Yeah, I was gonna say that the black temple, the barbershop. – Yep. – Wasn’t it Rowry’s Barbershop?
– It was Mr. Rowry, yes. – Was it? – Yep, it was Rowry’s Barbershop. – And also, Johnny Ross has had a shot there. – Okay. – Oh, that was it, yeah. – Yeah. Yeah. When I could scrape up enough pennies, I’d go to the barbershop.
But then, you know, you had the Afro thing, and the barbers wanted to cut your dang Afro out, so we were cutting each other’s hair in the dorm so that the Afros would be all right. But those were just great days. The relationships…
You know, for him to sit here and bring out the name of one of my best friends, just casually, and… But I think when Don was in engineering school, I think he told me there was one black female. – Gloria Jeff. – Okay. In- – She was one of my students too.
– Okay, in engineering school. It was… Those were times that this generation knows nothing of. And I’m gonna tell you, we were united. I’d only been in the Bentley Library once and, well, really, that was, and that was during the BAM strike. And we were ordered to keep our hands in our pockets
And just walk in and sit down. It terrified the hell out of the administration, the fact that we walked into the Bentley Library during the BAM strike. Now, I was bold enough to do that, but I was not bold enough to skip physics. (laughs) I’d just straight up say, “I can do this, but I can’t do that.” – Another question? – I have a question. – Oh, okay. – Good evening. My name is Chanel Miles. I am a graduate of the class of 2019. Yesterday marks a week since I was released
From the hospital for suicide ideation. And what this is teaching me is the power of your voice. So what I would love to know is how I can use my voice, Because that’s definitely one of the things that I was thinking about while I was hospitalized, is that I do have a story to tell and I would love to learn how to use my voice in a way that continues to impact people, in a way that I can make effective change
In the community of Detroit and abroad. – Yes, ma’am. (audience applauding) – You got it covered. – I got nothing. I would say start by being excellent. Be an example. Don’t be afraid to be the only one. Imagine what that would’ve meant if all black people,
The first one was afraid to be the only one. And then do what you do, build relationships, just like the man is saying, because that is true. If they know you, the rules can disappear. It’s crappy. It’s a crappy system if you’re not part of the in crowd,
And that’s why we gotta, you know, be part of the in crowd or make the in crowd or something. But anyway, then you build the relationships and you work it from there. But look, suicide, if I may… Oh, this may be overstepping my bounds here, but it’s a permanent solution
To what is probably a temporary situation. And that’s the really nice thing about getting to be a senior person, is that you know stuff, it changes. It changes everyday. You’re not the same person tomorrow that you are today. So if you ever get in a bad spot, just remember that.
When I was in grad school, now I’m talking a long time, (panelists laughing) grad school was two years, one year was horrible, was really hard for me. And the joke among the friends of ours that went to grad school is that one year is gonna be hard.
I don’t know if that’s still true, but it was for me. And I remember standing on Academy way and saying, “If I stand right here all day into tomorrow, things will be different tomorrow.” That’s how bad (laughs) it was. But anyways, that’s what I have to say, just hang in there.
Other people have it hard too and had it harder, you can imagine, you know, the generations before us. – I’d like to say something to this young lady. – Keep going. – Same here. – Look, in 2011, I had throat cancer,
And I had to go in for like 12 weeks of radiation and chemo. And let me tell you about the University of Michigan, in that radiation chamber there would just be me and the machine rotating around me. But do you know what those fools did? They played “The Michigan Difference” all day long. It was… And I wanna let you know how you can get your psychology altered. When I got through with cancer, for five years, every time that band came out the tunnel, I started crying. (audience laughing) I mean, I would turn away from people, but it reminded me because “The fight song”
Is very similar to “The Michigan Difference.” And what they were trying to tell you is, “If we save your life, you better leave some money.” But they used to do that in radiation oncology right here, and it blew my little weak mind all over everywhere. But luckily, the thing I remember about those terrible days was “The Michigan Difference.” And I still get a little wet in the eye when I hear the band play “The fight song.”
– Can I ask? – Talk to her. – Ma’am, what gave you the courage to share that with us, all of us? – God, I feel like He spoke to me while I was in there. And then my baby brothers, I didn’t wanna leave them, and I didn’t wanna leave them
Before I was able to give them something that they could continue on, so yeah. – That’s a reason to stay here. (audience applauding) – Yes. Yes. Oh, that’s okay. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts there are at least a third of the people in this room, at some point in their life,
Have thought about taking the ultimate step away from life. And I’m so glad you, like many of the rest of us, decided not to. If you want my number, I’m gonna even volunteer my wife’s number, (audience laughing) let me know afterwards. You got it. – Good evening. My question is… Well, my name is Charmice and I was at Michigan between 1997 and 2002. And that was like a restart of the BAM movement during that timeframe, so I was striking and doing sit-ins and things like that.
And one of the things that struck me was that you said that all of the black people spoke to each other, and that was always something on our campus, that black people didn’t speak. Even during that timeframe, we didn’t speak to each other. – Yep. – And so I’m wondering,
Like, between your generation and my generation and the next generation, and I don’t know if you guys have other relatives who have attended, how can we get back to all of the black people realizing that they’re black before they’re a wolverine? Because you’re right, you know, it’s hard being there sometimes.
And if you can’t even talk to the other black person, you know, whether you’re the only black person in the room or not, when you leave the room, you want a relief, and you didn’t always have that. So I just didn’t know if you guys had any other relatives. What was their experience?
And how can we get back to being united? – Let me just say that, particularly now when people have earphones on and earbuds, they probably aren’t even hearing you. But one of the things I do on campus, wherever I am, I just say hi to the person. And sometimes they’ll jump like,
“Oh, okay.” But I was walking across campus with one of my granddaughters and she was walking with me. She had spent the afternoon with me in my office and she said, “Grandma, do you speak to everybody?” And I said, “Yeah, I do.” And she said, “Well, do you know everybody?”
And I said, “Not yet.” (audience laughing) So there you go, that’s just one way of putting it. But you know, just take the initiative and just say hi. And sometimes it just takes one of us to say it first. So, anybody wanna add to that? – Go. I was just gonna say
Be the one to do it. You might notice when you’re out in, I don’t know, some mall, somewhere in a grocery store, notice black people our age will just nod at each other ’cause they’re there. – We do. – And we do that and-
– Don’t they call that the Black man’s nod, like? – You just call it the nod. (audience laughing) So there’s no reason you can’t do it, it’s not just for old people. – My wife laughs at me because we’ll go like, we’ll go to New York and I’m walking down the street
And I’ll say hi. You’d be surprised how many New Yorkers will say hi back. And so it goes to what Wendy and Elizabeth said, be the first to say hi, you’d be surprised how many will. – Nothing to lose. – Little town like Pontiac and Saginaw, you know?
– Don’t question nothing. – That’s right. – Yes. – I see another hand back there. – Thank you. I’m Debbie Willis and I’m also a Michigan alum, and I work at the University of Michigan Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. But I’m up here because I have a group of students
At Trotter who are like, “We wanna meet them.” (laughs) And we have the director of Trotter, Dr. Kyra Shahid, who’s doing a council of elders because she really wants to help Trotter preserve the legacy and impact of black students on campus and activism. So before I leave,
I wanna try to get your information to give to them. But the question they have is, what kind of advice would you give to students today? What kind of wisdom would you wanna share with the students who are watching you at Trotter? – Yes.
– So, you can get my stuff anytime you want. I do a guest lecture at the engineering school every year. I’ve been doing it for about seven or eight years now. And my comment would be (clears throat) from a little book called “Repacking Your Bags.” I got a lot of knowledge
About how to pursue and acquire the good life, and it came down to four things: doing what you love doing, being around the people you love and who love you, living in a place that you really enjoy on purpose. Those four things. And Dee, my wife, will tell you my mission statement,
Which is now branched out to about eight or nine pages, there’s a big piece in there that talks about those things. It’s not only doing what you’re passionate about, who you love, where you wanna live, figuring out how to do it on purpose, but also how will I know when I get there?
Those are the things that, to me, I found the most important guidance, points of guidance over the last 30 years or so. And I’m yours whenever you want in terms of going to talk to those kids. – I would tell ’em… Ricky, what would I tell ’em?
(audience members laughing) ‘Cause Ricky was… Tell ’em. – This is my dean of pledge. – Ricky. (audience laughing) – First five minutes to pledge and he said, “You are not at Michigan to pledge, you are here to get a degree.” That’s what he said, quote, unquote. – That’s right,
The degree, the degree, the degree. Those who stay and study will be champions, not just on the football field, but in the classroom, in the field of life. I said that to every line that I was the dean of pledges of, that, you know, we’re going to give you some junk to do,
But (audience laughing) it cannot interfere with the classroom. And I will say to those students here right now, the University of Michigan to all of us up here means excellence. – That’s right. – Because I can sit up and see a Michigan person and I know they’re gonna be good at something. They made it out of this place. – Thank you. – Elizabeth? – I have nothing. I have nothing to add to that. (laughs) – Was my sister in art school with you, Carlotta? – No, but I think Leslie knows her ’cause Leslie knows everybody and remembers everything. I remember nothing. I wonder… (audience laughing) I tell people I didn’t smoke a lot of weed when I was up there, I didn’t drink when I was up there,
But sometimes I wonder, “Was I there?” ‘Cause Leslie remembers everything. – Maybe you did smoke that weed and don’t remember. – No. (laughs) (audience laughing) No, I was very straight. I didn’t go off the rails until I was in my 30s. (laughs) – It was a $5 fine then to get a big-
– I think the only thing I would just add to what everyone else said is that the University of Michigan degree is going to give you, it’s gonna open up a whole lot of doors for you wherever you go, but those mean nothing unless you hold the door open
For the next person coming in behind you. And so I’m getting that sign back there. – Quick question to the panel. – Yes, sir. – What happened? There were about, the program shows about 250 African Americans were in 1968. What happened the day after King was killed? What did the African American students do then?
– Well, we had a vigil on the diag and people with candles. It was… Some people expressed their sympathy that way, and the white students joined in in that. And then there was another group that was ready to burn the university down. Now, they were very, very upset having…
You have no idea how the murder of Martin Luther King affected us here on campus. I mean, it was one of the most traumatic things in my life. I mean, I remember walking down Hill Street or somewhere, tears coming out my eyes, and Ricky, the, all the houses along there,
The windows would be open and everything, and it wasn’t the usual loud music playing and the laughing and the wildness. People knew this thing was for real, you know? That’s what I saw. But the only part that I remember participating in was going to the diag for the memorial that they had
On campus here. – I would say more, but Angela’s gonna slash my tires if I don’t save it. – I know. (laughs) Right. We’re only renting this space for a little bit. Is that right, Angela? Okay. All right. – I had… – Any… Okay. Someone is pointing to something back there. Okay.
Well, I just want to thank… – They were pointing to a person with a question. – Oh, a person with a question. – That would be me, the tall person. – Oh. Oh, okay. And Angela’s saying no, so maybe we could talk to you afterwards or something, once the, (laughs) (audience laughing)
Once they turn off the lights. But thank you all so much for coming. Let’s give our panelists one more round of applause. Last thing we wanna say is Go Blue! – Go Blue! – Oh God. – Good evening, everyone. We have a few more remarks before we return upstairs to the rotunda, but let’s give another warm round of applause to our panel. My name is Ayanna McConnell. I serve as the Acting Alumni Association President and CEO for the University of Michigan, and it is a pleasure to see all of you here. Thanks for being here. (audience applauding) I won’t be before you long because we have a very special treat
In the form of the Mia Quartet that will be performing for us from the School of Music, Theater and Dance, but I just wanted to share a couple of things that are happening on campus, share an alumni story and then give you an invitation. So first, again, thank you for the panel
For your wonderful stories. Thank you for the Wright for hosting this amazing in event, the Office of the President, including Santa J. Ono, our favorite lady chair, scholar, activist, Angela Dillard, for having the vision with Brian to do this. Thank you so much. (audience applauding) And more importantly,
Thank you for the audience members for being here. It’s wonderful to see this intergenerational room. I agree with Debbie, the students have a fierce appetite for connecting with you, so I hope that you will consider joining us back on campus to make those connections. Tonight is truly special,
And I want all of us to just sit here and think about all of the ancestors who are celebrating the fact that we are here together. Just sit in that moment. Many of you have been in this museum before with some of those ancestors,
Many of you have brought some of your family members here, so it’s really truly special that we are able to do this at the Wright in Detroit tonight. At the Alumni Association, we pride ourselves on fostering connections and fostering community. And we appreciate the generations of Michigan alumni
Who have given their time, talent, and resources in support of the university. There is one story that I do wanna uplift today, Sophia, Miss Sophia. But Sophia Holley Ellis was a black woman who was born in Detroit in 1927. Growing up, she was expected to go to school
Just long enough to get a factory job, find a husband, and start a family. However, she took an interest in German at a very young age, but she was told that black people were not smart enough to learn complex languages like German. Sophia came to the University of Michigan in October of 1945
To study German and biology, but she wasn’t allowed to move into the still segregated campus, and so she found a job as a live-in nanny near campus. So I wanna talk to the students who are watching. I just want you to sit in that for a moment.
This woman was told she shouldn’t be there, dual majors and she’s taking care of other people’s kids. She graduated with that dual degree in 1949, but struggled to find a teaching position. And so when she finally found a teaching position, she was told on the first day that she was a teacher,
That somebody thought she was a cleaning woman. There are so many other stories that I could share, but I wanted to lift up Sophia’s because she was someone who was overlooked and underestimated time and again, and in her words, all because of her indelible skin color.
Now, as a teacher here in the City of Detroit, and I’m a product of DPS, so I love this story, (audience cheering) she dedicated her life to creating opportunities for black students here in Detroit that didn’t exist for her. She took students to the University of Michigan to learn about business careers,
She led study trips abroad to Germany, and she created a scholarship at LS&A, even with her modest Detroit public school teacher salary. It was while she was studying for her second master’s degree from the University of Michigan; not her first, but her second; that she also served as a resident advisor
At Mary Markley Hall. She was committed to the university’s commitment to increase black students in the ’60s. I got to know her when she became a donor to the LEAD Scholars Program many years ago. She loved giving to LSA, she loved giving to LEAD,
But what she loved most was being in a room with students. So students, when you hear from these alumni, follow up with them. Miss Sophia was about yay tall, dressed in Maize & Blue from the tam on the top of her head to her shoes.
She would talk to the staff, she would say, “Thank you for doing what you do,” and start ignoring us so she can talk to the students. We lost Miss Sophia earlier this year, but her memory lives on in the students that are watching today. Now, I have an invitation,
An invitation for everyone here to connect to the students, connect to each other. All of the schools and colleges have wonderful alumni engagement teams, they have faculty happy to host you. We actually got a volunteer tonight for someone who wants to come help us with Welcome Wednesdays at the Alumni Center next Wednesday
And pass out bagels to students ’cause she’s retired. Thank you. (laughs) We love having you on campus. You also wanna visit the new Trotter Multicultural Center on campus. You need to connect with these students. There are 7,700 freshmen. 7,700 freshmen, and they need to see us at the University of Michigan.
Now, at this time, I want to invite the Mia Quartet to come and perform “Klap Your Hands.” This is written by a U of M graduate, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and dedicated to Rosa Parks. Help me welcome the Mia Quartet. – Good evening. We are the Mia String Quartet, and we are so excited to perform the second movement of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s string quartet entitled “Rosa Parks.” The first movement of this quartet was actually inspired by a statement that Rosa Parks made herself saying, “I made my mind not to move.”
This was, of course, in reference to her defiant stance on the bus. Daniel Bernard Roumain is actually, as was stated, a Michigan graduate. And before we perform the second movement of his string quartet, I’ll share a quote from D. B. R. himself. “I often refer to the stage
As the last bastion of democracy, where all voices can and should be heard, where we are all equal, important and necessary.” In this movement entitled “Klap Your Hands,” we will, in fact, be clapping, but we kindly ask that you save your own for after the performance. (audience laughing) Thank you. – Simply excellent. Thank you so much, Mia Quartet. So now, we’ve come to the conclusion of our evening. We’re going to say goodnight and thank you to all of us joining via livestream. We are inviting our guests who are here to the rotunda for the afterglow,
And also a chance to engage with the archivists from the Bentley’s to learn more about the project and to share your stories. And with that, I will wish you a wonderful night, and Go Blue! – Go Blue!
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