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.

This bizarre business of social distancing is not new. When the ‘Spanish’ Flu stalked Americans, Ann Arbor all but shut down. Nurses, meanwhile, delivered supplies to victims.

As co-founder of ‘Esquire’ magazine, Arnold Gingrich, BA ’25, was a headhunter of literature’s leading talent, from Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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.

U-M political scientist J. David Singer founded the Correlates of War Project in 1963 to assess, analyze, and predict the factors that lead to wars. Ironically, the project grew out of a ‘peace studies’ program.