students
Students learn history firsth and by studying the 1966 student boycott of Northern High School in Detroit by Sheryl James
42 n LSA fall 2009
signed up for the class Students on Strike, she thought she would learn about a little-remembered civil rights event in 1966 through books, lectures, and maybe some hastily Googled facts and figures. But as Harlow and her classmates can testify, that is so not what happened. Instead of reading a textbook rehash of this 43-year-old dynamic event — a student walkout at Northern High School in Detroit staged by students to protest race-based education inequities — students interviewed leaders and participants of the walkout. Instead of Googling for quick-hit facts by third-person sources, she and her classmates learned what “collections” are by going through them at the Bentley Historical Library, and by talking to an archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor
Detroit News scans courtesy of the archives at the University of Michigan Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
Students on Strike
When LSA first-year student Michelle Harlow