All good origin stories contain at least a kernel of myth at the center of the plot. If there’s any such myth in the University’s origins, it’s not about heroes or grandiose works. It’s an idea embedded in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — that these Great Lakes states should provide public education to the region’s children.

In 1945, Sarah Elizabeth Ray was denied passage on a ferry on the Detroit River because she was Black. She fought the injustice, became a civil rights activist, and her case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, her legacy is being preserved in a collection coming to the Bentley Historical Library.

As with most things in life, there is more to the Michigan Union than meets the eye. Its architectural style and embellishments, recently remodeled for a 21st-century community, represent the physical remnant of an early-1900s movement to forge a new ethos for the – ahem — “Michigan Man.”

A devastating fire in Ann Arbor destroyed a restaurant that once was home to the iconic Canterbury House. 

Elizabeth Farrand — historian, university librarian, and physician — was among U-M’s most accomplished graduates of the 1800s, despite the unpleasant and ‘trifling matter’ of being considered eccentric by her male counterparts.

U-M’s Clements Library holds some 60,000 picture postcards dating to the late-19th/early-20th centuries. Vintage photos and scrawled notes open a fascinating window into Michigan’s past. Help make this historic trove digitally searchable.

Upon his death in 2000, this pioneer in human genetics was lauded as one of U-M’s greatest scientists. But a post-mortem assault on his honor provides a cautionary tale of what can happen when ideas become weapons and an appetite for outrage overcomes the search for truth.

In 1880, the parallel lives of a misguided scientist and U-M’s first Black female student revealed a contrast of white and Black, privilege and struggle, and more than anything words and actions.

When she died in 1924, Madelon Stockwell, BA 1872, was believed to be the richest woman in Kalamazoo, Mich. A half-century earlier, she was the first – and only – woman to enroll at U-M.