Student films. Journal entries. Tributes to hospital workers. The Bentley Historical Library’s COVID-19 collection provides a poignant glimpse of the pandemic’s impact on the U-M community. Contributions are welcome.

Nearly 100 years before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic would unleash a wave of anti-Asian bias, a smaller but similar prejudice rippled across the U-M campus. It started with the 19th annual production of the Michigan Union Opera’s musical comedy, ‘Tickled to Death.’

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 the surreal days after the 1963 assassination of JFK, one Ann Arbor churchgoer sought to redeem the tragedy through a controversial – and secret – move. She invited Marina Oswald to U-M.

Before COVID-19, the college campus could be described as America’s ‘last idyll.’ Perhaps that is why so many mystery writers over time have set their tales of terror at a fictionalized University of Michigan.

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 meeting with political adversaries, she made lace to appear ‘completely domestic.’ But Lucia V. Grimes, BA 1902/MA 1906, was a canny organizer who pioneered a legislative ‘pressure system’ that propelled ratification of the 19th Amendment. She even enlisted her daughter in the movement (above).

U-M commencement speakers have imparted wisdom, warnings, predictions, and platitudes to graduates since 1845. A common theme: Each class inherits the great events, problems, and possibilities of the time. Plus: 2020 Commencement.

Decades of studying pandemics and how to curb them led a U-M physician-historian to coin a term the rest of us now use in daily conversation.