Collections Magazine, Summer 2021

SUMMER 2021

COL L E C T ION S A P U B L I CAT I O N O F T H E B E N T L EY H I STO R I CA L L I B RA RY

In 1889, stagecoach robber and outlaw Reimund Holzhey was captured in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But that’s only half the story. Learn how photos of the arrest and other historical materials eventually made their way to the Bentley archive.

SUMMER 2021

On the cover: Stagecoach robber and outlaw Reimund Holzhey (middle) after his capture in the Upper Peninsula by Deputy Sheriff John Glode (right) and Pat Whalen (left).

Read the full story on page 4.

(This page) Photo of the Pleiades star cluster taken with the Heber D. Curtis telescope, August 1951. Read about how Curtis defended his understanding of the universe on page 26.

4

contents [features]

[departments]

Michigan’s “Black Bart”

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

In the wild country of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Reimund Holzhey was a wanted man. A robber and murderer, he terrorized stagecoach and train passengers in the late 1800s. Years after his eventual capture, a different hunt began: this time to collect and preserve material from this unique time in Michigan’s history.

10 Black and Blue

Willis Ward may be best known for being benched during the 1934 Georgia Tech vs. U-M football game, when Jim Crow laws prohibited him from playing. But his story goes well beyond that, including triumphing in Ann Arbor on a highly segregated and racist campus and forging a successful path in law and politics.

18 It Was a Man’s World

In 1969, the federal government accused U-M of illegal sex discrimination. Initially, President Fleming and the University’s all-male administration rejected the evidence. But determined women continued to demand changes, leading U-M to become the first university to establish an affirmative action plan to ensure equity between the sexes.

1 Digitization by the Numbers

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2 Select Bentley Bites IN THE STACKS

25 From the Top 26 The Great Debate PROFILES

28 Scratching the Surface BENTLEY UNBOUND

30 M Glow Blue 32 An Engine for Good

DIRECTOR’S NOTES Terrence J. McDonald Director, Bentley Historical Library

Digitization by the Numbers HERE ARE THREE NUMBERS with which friends of historical archives like the Bentley should be familiar:

MICHIGAN DAILY DIGITAL ARCHIVES

0, 1, 0

No, that is not some kind of binary computer code. These are real numbers.

The first zero is the percentage of archival collections that were intentionally created by the Google Books project. That project, as many will recall, was launched in 2002 and set out to try to digitize all the books in the world. With the cooperation of university libraries everywhere—including Michigan’s—millions of volumes were digitized. But archival collections like those at the Bentley were never intended to be part of that project.

The second number, 1, is perhaps unsurprising given the above. It represents the percentage of archival collections in the world that have been digitized. Here at the Bentley, too, that number is less than one percent of our collections.

The third number, yet another 0, is the amount of base budget in most historical archives that was designed to cover the costs of digitization. Like it or not, historical archives are also “historical” organizations. They began before the age of digitization—for the Bentley the beginning was 1935—and they were budgeted for an exclusively paper-based process.

The costs to produce every paper-based collection are significant: a field worker

obtains the collection; a processing archivist organizes it; conservationists repair any damage found; reference archivists guide researchers to its important points; and a massive climate-controlled building maintains the paper-based collections in perpetuity.

This is what archives were originally funded to do and what they still must do.

It may be tempting to think that digitized collections would be easier to collect and maintain, but the opposite is true. Digitization requires everything a paper collection does plus the digitization of each page of a collection, optical character recognition that permits searching, and a website on which to display the collection.

These costs are 100 percent above and beyond what is required to obtain and maintain a paper-based collection. And in most archives, budgets have not grown to cover them.

Now let's look at another “number”: incalculable! That's the value of some digitized collections.

In the days when there were strictly paper archives of The Michigan Daily— think huge volumes containing paper issues available only in on-campus libraries—about 12 people per month used the historical copies of the newspaper.

By contrast, in the first month that we launched the online, searchable digitized Michigan Daily Digital Archive

(Left) Digitized articles like these from The Michigan Daily online archive helped researcher Sara Fitzgerald write her latest book.

(digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily), 6,000 people used it, and that number has risen since.

The existence of this online collection has transformed teaching and research on the campus and made the history of the University much more available to the world.

Two new books on that history have been published in the last year alone: The Boundaries of Pluralism: The World of the University of Michigan’s Jewish Students from 1897 to 1945 by Andrei S. Markovits and Kenneth Garner; and Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX by Sara Fitzgerald. The authors have said the depth of their work would have been impossible without this archive.

The Michigan Daily Digital Archive would have been impossible without the help of the Kemp Family Foundation.

We include requests for funds for more digitization in just about every communication you receive from the Bentley.

More digitization is a future necessity and a nearly unbounded good for society, but a very heavy financial lift for every paper-based archive in the world.

To support the Bentley’s digitization efforts, please visit: myumi.ch/7ZnBB

Terrence J. McDonald

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of History, and Director BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 1

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abridg 1,176 Number of questions asked via email or phone last year, all of which were answered

by Bentley Reference staff.

120,147 Number of downloads last year in Deep Blue, the University’s free online repository of U-M-related work.

September 20, 1969 Date that Michigan Daily photographer Sara Krulwich remained on the Big House sidelines to photograph the Michigan-Vanderbilt game, even though women were prohibited from being on the field. Three security guards surrounded Krulwich and demanded she leave. She told them they’d

have to drag her out. The game started, and security declined to make a scene in front of the fans.

“My first act of civil disobedience remains one of the most important days in my life,” she wrote in an essay about the experience that appeared in the New York Times in 2009.

USER FRIENDLY Breakdown of Bentley users:

25.8%

Undergraduate students

15.3%

Graduate students

14.6%

Independent researchers

10.9% Alumni

9.4% Faculty

24% Other

2 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

JENNY FROM THE BLOCK You may have seen former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm in the news last February when her nomination for Energy Secretary in the Biden administration was confirmed. But did you know the Bentley holds Granholm's papers, which include this photo of Granholm with former U-M President Mary Sue Coleman during commencement ceremonies in 2003? The Bentley is the archive for many Michigan governors' papers, which are open to the public.

The Struggle to Document Covid-19 for Future Generations The headline of a story in the Washington Post on December 1, 2020, which referenced the Bentley’s efforts to collect and document the Covid-19 pandemic on the University of Michigan campus.

ged

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COL L E C T ION S

90,156 Number of minutes content was viewed last year in the Bentley Digital Media Library.

$5,510

MASK ON, MASK OFF In 1918, as a post-war influenza outbreak ravaged the United States, the topic of wearing masks was hotly contested. Bentley Archivist Michelle McClellan joined a panel of experts to speak on the topic of "masking up" as part of a Pandemics Perspectives series sponsored by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History this past January.

Total given by generous donors to the Bentley on March 10, 2021—also known as Giving Blueday, U-M’s campus-wide day of giving. The Bentley is grateful for your support!

80–90% Rate of effectiveness of the polio vaccine, as announced by Jonas Salk and U-M Professor Thomas Francis Jr. on April 12, 1955, on a U-M sound stage. A few years later, polio was all but eradicated.

THE MILKY WAY WASHINGTON, D.C. DETROIT, MICHIGAN GOGEBIC COUNTY, UPPER PENINSULA, MICHIGAN NORTH CAMPUS, U-M Some of the locations visited in this issue of Collections magazine.

GEORGE JEWETT TROPHY Name of the new rivalry game trophy established by the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, which will be played for each time the two teams meet on the football field.

George Jewett was the first African American to play football at each institution and was the first Black player in the history of the Big Ten Conference.

This is the first rivalry game trophy named for an African American player in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) history.

“It seems clear that the U of M has become much more liberal in assisting women to acquire an education, but the present university system in Ann Arbor prevents a woman from using her education on this campus.”

—Helen Tanner in a 1969 letter to Michigan President Robben Fleming about U-M’s discriminatory hiring policies against women. Tanner held a Ph.D. in history and had been hired

by U-M ‘s Department of History to teach in several capacities, but was consistently rejected as a full professor by the all-male faculty. See our full story on women’s fight for equality at U-M on page 18.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 3

COL L E C T ION S

WANTED Reward for the capture, dead or alive, of one Reimund Holzhey, better known as

How a stagecoach robber and murderer was brought to justice in the Upper Peninsula, and how the details of the case, including a one-of-a-kind photo, made it to the Bentley.

By MADELEINE BRADFORD

DEAD OR ALIVE! BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 5

Reimund Holzhey, the notorious thief who had killed a banker in a stagecoach holdup only a few days prior, was hungry, exhausted, and hunted. He needed a room for the night, and Republic was the nearest town.

It was August 30, 1889.

Pausing their cribbage game, William O’Brien, the former detective who owned the hotel, and Albert Drake, a local sharpshooter, turned to look at the newcomer. According to Drake’s eyewitness account, Holzhey requested a room, food, and a bottle of pop.

“Have you seen that man before?” O’Brien asked, when Holzhey left.

Drake hadn’t. O’Brien went to get a newspaper clipping from his back room, examined it, and was confident he had just seen a stage robber and murderer.

“Now, don’t you open your mouth,” he told Drake, “I want you to go and look for Deputy Sheriff John Glode, and Pat Whalen, the night marshall.”

Glode and Whalen hurried over to the hotel, along with Judge Weiser. All agreed: Holzhey had to be the wanted man. They’d catch him unawares in the morning. Dressing in civilian clothes, they set out the following day.

What happened next? Well, it depends on who you listen to.

Albert Drake claimed to have crouched on the veranda of the hotel with his gun, while Glode and Whalen ambled along the road. Splitting up, they let Holzhey walk between them. They hurled themselves at Holzhey from either side, crashing to the ground.

Struggling to reach for his pocket, and the gun hidden within, Holzhey found himself overpowered by the night watchman’s club.

Different newspapers juggle the facts. In some

6 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

versions, Glode and Judge Weiser caught Holzhey together, and Whalen goes unmentioned. According to Glode’s daughter, it was Glode alone who managed the capture, as Holzhey kicked Judge Weiser in the leg.

Regardless of how, Holzhey was caught. He was questioned in the town hall, and his captors sent a telegram to “Chas M. Howell,” the prosecuting attorney for the stagecoach murder.

They also hired a photographer: William Whitesides of Ironwood, whose photography practice spanned the Upper Peninsula.

For an individual portrait, Whitesides dressed Holzhey up in a vest full of oversized cartridges, and posed him with an empty pistol and a rifle, mimicking a famous photo of Billy the Kid. For the group photograph, these props were taken away. Whitesides brought out a painted backdrop—the kind often used for family portraits. Night watchman Whalen and Deputy Sheriff Glode changed into their uniforms, and Holzhey was then posed sitting on a chair between them, staring straight ahead. Behind them, painted curtains. Scrolling columns. Ahead of Holzhey: a trial and two life sentences. (He would serve about 25 years in the Marquette prison before being paroled for good behavior.)

But how, exactly, did these photographs of the stagecoach robber and his captors end up in the Bentley Historical Library?

THE

SAFETY NET

It starts with a man who kept an archive in his closet.

It wasn’t that Victor Lemmer set out to become a historian. Born and raised in Escanaba, Michigan, he had an economics education from Notre Dame. He stumbled, almost accidentally, into a specialty in the history of the Upper Peninsula (U.P.), as the first auditor of Gogebic County. Understanding the economy of this remote area in the southwest corner of the U.P., along the border of Wisconsin, turned out to require learning mining history.

The more he learned, the more he found he loved it.

Lemmer’s “closet archives” began in earnest in the 1930s, filling up with shards of the past: photographs gifted, letters exchanged, and newspapers collected.

As so many local historians end up doing, Lemmer also became a safety net for papers otherwise destined to be mulched. Fragments of people’s lives piled up higher and higher.

It became apparent that a closet wouldn’t cut it.

Lemmer’s interest in history bloomed. He joined

HS19797

THE NEW MAN IN TOWN WAS A MURDERER. JUDGE EDWIN WEISER SPOTTED HIM ON THE STREET AND WAS SURE OF IT. THERE WAS THE SMALL MUSTACHE, THE LARGE EARS, THE SLIGHT BUILD. HE MATCHED THE NEWSPAPER DESCRIPTIONS EXACTLY.

COL L E C T ION S

historical societies. He began writing about his collections, presenting on telephone development, ore, gemstones—and the Gogebic stagecoach robbery.

Opening the first folder of material labeled “Holzhey’s Stage Coach Robbery” from Lemmer’s collection, it’s clear that Lemmer actively wrote to people connected with Holzhey’s arrest. There are letters from Albert Drake, and from John Glode’s daughter.

A neatly typed description of the Gogebic robbery court case, which would go on to be published in Michigan History magazine in 1954, showcases Lemmer’s investigative work. In the second folder, filled with newspaper clippings and photographs, a line of red cuts through a map of Gogebic County, showing a painstakingly plotted chart of the stagecoach’s fatal journey.

The place of the robbery is circled, pinning a dramatic chapter of Michigan’s history in place. Lemmer knew the value of detailed evidence. He was willing to put the work in to get it—from literally mapping the incident, to locating an eyewitness account.

(Opening spread) After his arrest, Reimund Holzhey’s captors dressed him in a vest with oversized cartridges, along with an empty pistol and a rifle, then hired local photographer William Whitesides.

(This page) Victor Lemmer investigated Holzhey’s final stagecoach robbery for years and plotted the coach’s ill-fated route in red on this map. The robbery’s location is circled.

THE

EYEWITNESS

“You got the right man, you did a good job.”

Holzhey’s words upon being arrested, according to Albert Drake, were surprisingly polite—at least until he added, “I only regret being taken in a little mossback town like this.”

Drake was around 90 years old when he wrote this description. Even if embellished or imperfect, his account still provides valuable details, about both the arrest and life in the town of Republic. With eight saloons and ungraded roads, it was “as tough a pioneer town as anywhere in the Upper Peninsula,” he wrote.

Eyewitness descriptions also help make sense of the many contradictory accounts, generated as Holzhey’s exploits blazed across newspapers in the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin. Lemmer’s second folder of material about Holzhey bristles with clippings, showing Holzhey almost

Newspaper headlines and stories capture the fascination with Holzhey’s crimes and capture, including a cartoon depicting Holzhey

as a storybook cowboy villain. Holzhey was responsible for at least one death.

COL L E C T ION S

as a storybook cowboy villain.

Other newspapers depict a life that was much rougher, and less romanticized.

Escaping from Germany to avoid being drafted into the army, Holzhey claimed to have suffered from mental illness from childhood. He had periods of hazy memory, and violent impulses that he said he was unable to control. His defense pleaded insanity.

It was an explanation the jury simply didn’t buy.

(TOP TO BOTTOM) HS19800, HS19798-3, HS19798-1

ON

TRIAL

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THESE [ . . . ] MEN WILL DO WITH A HUMAN BROTHER WHOSE MADDENED BRAIN DRIVES HIM HITHER AND THITHER LIKE A DRY LEAF IN A STORM WIND? IF THEY CAN IN ANY WAY DO IT THEY WILL TAKE HIM ALIVE AND PUT HIM THROUGH WHAT THEY CALL A FAIR TRIAL, THEN THEY TALK ABOUT GOD AND THE LAW, WHEN IN FACT IT IS BUT A MATTER OF FRIENDS AND GOLD . . .”

To the general public, Holzhey was an “outlaw,” a “lone highwayman,” a “desperado”; to pursuers, he was the “cleverest woodsman in the Northwest.” Called the “Black Bart of Michigan” and the “Jesse James of Wisconsin,” Holzhey had a reputation that left little doubt that he would be convicted. He held up entire trains on his own, robbed coaches and individuals, and the fear of him kept people from traveling in the Upper Peninsula.

“Donate. I’m collecting,” was his demand to the stagecoach traveling down to Lake Gogebic on August 26, 1889, according to newspaper clippings. In a pretense of obedience, one passenger, Donald Macarcher, reached into a pocket—and pulled out his own gun. Holzhey began to shoot, hitting both Macarcher, and Adolph G. Fleischbein, a mustachioed banker who also fired back. The stagecoach sped away, but Fleischbein fell, landing in the dirt. He begged Holzhey to spare him.

Holzhey did.

He left after robbing Fleischbein. By the time help came for Fleischbein, however, he had been bleeding for too long. Nothing more could be done.

Holzhey took just four things, according to Lemmer’s transcription of the Gogebic Court record: a gold watch, a pocketbook, a 10-dollar gold coin, and a five-dollar bill.

Ultimately, that’s what betrayed him. Discovering Fleischbein’s valuables on Holzhey upon his arrest, the officers knew they’d found the right man. Holzhey later bitterly recalled the trial in a letter published by the Detroit News: “Do you know what these [ . . . ] men will do with a human brother whose maddened brain drives him hither and thither like a dry leaf in a storm wind? If they can in any way do it they will take him alive and put him through what they call a fair trial, then they talk about god and the law, when in fact it is but a matter of friends and gold . . .”

It was a matter of gold—both the gold Holzhey stole, and the gold of the reward money for his capture, which was reported to reach $3,000 (an astronomical sum at the time). There was also overwhelming evidence that Holzhey had committed the crimes he was accused of: his admissions, his identification by others who rode

the stagecoach, and the goods from various robberies were enough to keep him locked up.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

John Glode allegedly kept Holzhey’s spiked shoes for years, along with his red handkerchief, which he used to cover his face in early robberies. Glode’s daughter, Lucille Austerman, wrote about them to Lemmer, as part of a description of her father’s life. Eventually, Glode’s wife decided enough was enough and discarded the objects, according to Austerman, but she still claimed to have “the large gun Mr. Holzhey used.”

Meanwhile, Holzhey himself did not take kindly to prison.

After violent outbursts, including one where he took a prisoner hostage, and several attempts to starve himself, Reimund Holzhey was sent to the Michigan Asylum in Ionia.

Exactly what operation he underwent there remains unclear, but by all accounts he came back a changed man. One newspaper reports that a bone that had been “pressing on his brain” was lifted; another says a “metal plate” was inserted into his skull. Whatever the case, Holzhey became a model prisoner, started writing a newsletter for the prison, took charge of the prison library, and even became the mugshot photographer.

His urgent petitions for release were granted in 1910; on his first night as a free man, he reportedly stayed awake, outside, staring at Ives Lake, and waiting for the sun to rise.

Changing his name to Carl Paul, Holzhey ended up working as a photographer and writer in Sanibel, Florida. There, he would eventually take his own life, leaving behind only a note with his date and place of birth written on it.

Victor Lemmer himself eventually found places to store his archives outside of his closet. The Archives of Michigan and the Bentley Historical Library both received wonderful troves of Upper Peninsula history from Lemmer’s collections. You can come to the Bentley Historical Library to look through his 10-box collection, where you can read about everything from gold mining to ghost mines—or even hold the actual photographs of Reimund Holzhey himself.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 9

BLACK AND BLUE

Willis Ward was an athletic champion who triumphed on the field and off in spite of U-M’s racial climate. Interviews and papers from the Bentley reveal Ward’s experiences on a campus that thought itself progressive and equitable, but was in reality highly segregated.

By Robert Havey

10 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

COL L E C T ION S

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 11

W

WHEN GERALD R. FORD RAN FOR PRESIDENT IN 1976, he answered critics of his civil rights record by telling a story from his college football days at Michigan.

His good friend and teammate Willis Ward was told he couldn’t play in U-M’s game against Georgia Tech. In 1934, schools in the Jim Crow South refused to compete against Black players, even for road games. Ford said he and the rest of the team threatened to not play until Ward convinced them they should.

When Ford wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in 1999 defending U-M’s affirmative action policy, he said Ward had “decided on his own not to play,” and “[h]is sacrifice led me to question how educational administrators could capitulate to raw prejudice.”

When Ford died in 2006, President

George W. Bush gave a eulogy that used Ward’s story as an example of how Ford “confronted racial prejudice” and displayed “character and leadership.”

These retellings brought Ward and the Georgia Tech saga to a national audience for the first time in more than 60 years. But Ford’s version of the story should be taken with a grain of salt. Often left out in the retelling is Ward himself—how he came to be at the center of a campus crisis and how he was affected.

Digital archives at the Bentley like the Michigan Daily Digital Archive and the upcoming African American Student Project database make it possible to put together a more complete picture of what life was like at Michigan for Black athletes like Ward, before and after that infamous game.

A RARE TALENT

Willis Ward’s father was not thrilled at his son’s ambition to attend college. He liked the idea of him playing football even less.

“I was the youngest of seven children of a factory worker,” Ward explained in a

“ ”

He didn’t believe that one white kid would block another white kid for a Black kid to make a touchdown.

The world didn’t function that way; they would gang up and do me up.

(Opening spread, left to right) A newspaper caption regarding Ward’s exclusion in the Georgia Tech game, October 10, 1934; Ward in football pads circa 1934; Ward’s 1934 U-M football team portrait; South State Street, Ann Arbor; Ward’s portrait circa 1965; Ward (bottom right) with Gerald Ford (bottom left) circa 1950; Ward congressional campaign matchbook.

(This page) Clockwise from top left: Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, Fielding Yost, and team captain Tom Austin from the 1934 U-M football team photo.

(Opposite page top) Name-based aggression against Ward is on display in this racist 1934 football program, which refers to him as “Wooly.” Ward said he was also regularly called “Willy.”

(Opposite page bottom) Ward executing the high jump, 1935.

12 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

“ ”

COL L E C T ION S

The black students that could qualify and had the means were so few and far between.

There wasn’t even enough there to pay attention to.

It was lonely.

Lonely as hell.

Dartmouth or Northwestern University when a group of influential U-M alumni approached him and asked if he would consider coming to Michigan. Ward was interested, but there hadn’t been a Black football player at Michigan since George Jewett in 1892. It was widely known that Fielding Yost, legendary U-M football coach and then the athletic director, strictly enforced this unwritten ban.

The alumni group eventually convinced the current football coach Harry Kipke to defy Yost and add Ward to the team.

SAME CAMPUS, DIFFERENT WORLDS

1970 interview with U-M graduate (Ph.D. ’70) and Tri-State College Professor John Behee. Ward said his father believed “a man ought to grow up, marry, work hard, sit on his own property, behave himself, and get into heaven.

“He didn’t believe that one white kid would block another white kid for a Black kid to make a touchdown. The world didn’t function that way; they would gang up and do me up.”

At Detroit’s Northwestern High School, it became clear what transcendent athletic talent Ward possessed. He broke the Michigan state records in the high and low hurdles and the world scholastic record in the high jump. Twice. In 1934, he made the all-state football team.

Ward also did well in school and became one of the few Black students at Northwestern to be put on the college-track curriculum. In his interview with Behee, Ward explained that it was assumed college prep was a “waste of time” for the rest of the Black students since they “lacked the means to pay for college.”

Ward was set to enroll at either

Both Ford and Ward arrived in Ann Arbor in the fall of 1931.

They both were highly touted football recruits who dreamed of playing in the Big House.

Both had to find part-time jobs to afford tuition.

But the Ann Arbor that Ward stepped into was one very different from Ford’s. Ward was Black while his professors, teammates, and nearly all of the U-M student body, weren’t. Of the 9,707 students enrolled that semester, only 61 were Black.

Housing for the few Black students was de facto segregated. There were no dormitories for men in 1931 (the first, West Quad, wouldn’t open until 1939). The only options for Black male students were boarding houses in Ann Arbor’s Old Fourth Ward or pledging an all-Black fraternity. Ward was able to join Alpha Phi Alpha and lived at the chapter house on 1183 East Huron for most of his time at U-M. “Black kids were so poor, in the main, they couldn’t afford to go to Michigan,” said Ward

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PAGE 12–13 (LEFT TO RIGHT): BL009787, BL013352, BL015697; OPPOSITE PAGE: THE MICHIGAN DAILY

in an interview with Behee. “The black students that could qualify and had the means were so few and far between. There wasn’t even enough there to pay attention to.

“It was lonely. Lonely as hell.”

Kipke got Ward a job washing dishes at a bar on State Street called The Parrot. “The cook happened to be a Black man,” Ward recalled. On hearing that he was going to play football, the cook “fed me better than he fed anyone,” Ward said. After a month, the owner took exception to Ward’s budding campus celebrity and told him to use the back entrance. The next day Kipke got Ward a job washing dishes at the Michigan Union, a highly sought-after job usually reserved for upperclassmen. Ward was the first Black student to work in the Union.

EQUAL GROUND It didn’t take long for Ward to earn his reputation as an elite athlete. In November 1931, The Michigan Daily wrote that the young star “proved his worth” playing “outstanding” offensive and defensive end on the freshman football squad.

Ward often won all three of his events at freshman track meets. So often did Ward account for a majority of U-M’s points in the final total, the Daily dubbed him the “One-Man Track Team.”

Ward won two national championships with the varsity football team in 1932 and 1933. The game reports in The Michigan Daily are filled with his heroics: a blocked extra point in a 7–6 win over Illinois; an interception at a pivotal moment against Ohio State during homecoming; a safety followed shortly by a touchdown reception against Princeton.

While one side of the sports page celebrated Ward’s football prowess, the other prayed he would stay healthy for track season. In October 1932, a Michigan Daily columnist beseeched varsity track coach Charles Hoyt to stop Ward from playing football, since “if something should happen to Ward . . . Michigan A Michigan Daily would be a greater petition announceloser in track than ment supporting Ward being permit- his admittedly good football abilted to play against Georgia Tech. ity would gain.”

The next May, coach Kipke was asked a similar question by some track enthusiasts.

Kipke replied, “Save your breath. He is too valuable to the football team. He won’t get hurt.”

Ward led the track team to three consecutive Big Ten titles. His performance in the 1934 meet was called “superhuman” by The Michigan Daily, and “something to tell your grandchildren.”

In May 1933, Ward became the first Black student to be initiated into the honorary society Sphinx.

GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT Fielding Yost scheduled the football game against Georgia Tech for October 20, 1934.

There wasn’t a plan in place for what Michigan would do about Ward and Georgia Tech’s refusal to compete against a Black player. It’s unclear if Yost ever had an idea how it would play out, but it is certain he knew it was an issue long before game day.

Yost knew Georgia Tech’s coach personally and received many increasingly frantic telegrams from him asking for his assurance Ward wouldn’t play.

Word got out about the situation and quickly spread all over campus. The first letter to the editor appeared in the Daily on October 9, 1934: “This is a very cosmopolitan campus, where racial discrimination is supposedly abolished. But is it?” The front page of the October 10 issue included a statement from the Ann Arbor Ministerial Association condemning Ward’s benching.

A person going by just the initials L.E.T. wrote to the Daily asking those defending Ward to “inject a little tolerance into your stand-pat attitude,” and “remember that antipathies thrive on just such an unbending attitude.”

The next day, apparently satisfied with presenting the two sides of the issue, the editorial board declared: “The subject has been covered, as fairly and as impartially as possible, from all angles.” (It hadn’t.)

“The Daily will not publish any more letters on this subject.” (They did.)

On October 19, a mass meeting at the Natural Science auditorium was called by the “Ward United Front Committee” to present their case to the student body.

Almost immediately the meeting devolved

into heckling and shouting as a “Tory student group” (likely Michigamua, a senior honor society that became known for its initiations that appropriated Native American imagery) sought to sabotage the meeting in any way possible. Coins were thrown at the speakers. A few people in favor of Ward sitting out said it was actually out of concern for his own well-being. Others presented the forced removal of a player because of their ethnicity to be a matter of “tact” and “hospitality.”

One of these counter speakers later admitted that their strategy was to “break up” the meeting by “making filibuster speeches.” They added, “It got pretty funny before it was over.”

THE TROUBLE Ward didn’t play in the game against Georgia Tech. Many accounts have it as Ward’s decision, but it is hard to see what his other choices were. He talked to coach Kipke, his first ally on campus, and confided in him that this made him want to quit.

Ward remembered Kipke telling him, “But for the problems that a coach goes through playing a Black athlete today, if you quit now, it’s not worth the struggle.

And I won’t play a Black athlete again.”

Suddenly, Ward wasn’t just responsible for being the best student athlete he could be. He was on the hook for every future Black athlete with dreams of playing for Michigan. The fallout of that moment for Ward was devastating. His grades fell.

He began to feel the pain of all the slights he had ignored over the years, including never being voted football or track captain.

“All of a sudden now, the practice that you did because it was the thing to do to be good . . . all of a sudden becomes a work of drudgery.”

LAST LEG Despite everything, Ward still gave his all in his last track season. Possibly his most enduring athletic feat was when he beat Ohio State’s Jesse Owens in the 60- and 100-yard dash.

It was bad enough to have Jim Crow seek him out in Michigan. He didn’t need

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 15

to travel abroad to be subjected to the same discrimination. So, disillusioned and heartbroken, Ward chose to not participate in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. He hung up both his track spikes and football cleats for good.

Even if Ward wanted to try professional football, there were no Black players on any NFL teams in 1934. Yet another unwritten rule kept all Black players off NFL teams until after World War II. Ward was offered a job at the Ford Motor Company after graduation. The position was an important but delicate one: Ward was the assistant to Donald Marshall, the head of the Negro Division of the Service Department. His job, as he saw it, was to fight for the Black workers and ameliorate racial conflict, all while distancing himself from the brutal union-busting that Ford had become known for. Ward left Ford to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War II. His replacement was his onetime greatest rival: Jesse Owens.

Willis Ward (left) and Jesse Owens (right) at the Ford Motor Company’s Benson Research Center, November 23, 1942.

Ford obtained his law degree from the Detroit College of Law in 1939. He worked his way from Wayne County Prosecutor to Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan to the head of the District’s Civil Division.

Ward was appointed by Governor George Romney to the Michigan Public Service Commission in 1966. Ward was the first Black commissioner in the state agency in charge of all public utilities. His appointment came after an enthusiastic recommendation from his onetime teammate, Congressman Gerald Ford.

Despite everything, Ward stayed committed to the University of Michigan, even doing some recruiting for U-M football coach Bump Elliott.

“I’ll do everything in the world to get you some fine Black athletes,” Ward recalled saying to Elliott. “Bear in mind I know the story. I just don’t want that kid to ever look me in the face and say, ‘You sent me to a school where they are prejudiced against me because of my color.’”

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

By Robert Havey

University of Michigan graduate John Behee interviewed 28 Black U-M athletes between 1969 and 1974 as research for his book, Hail to the Victors. The Bentley has digitized Behee’s recorded interviews, which give a rare firsthand account of what lives were like for Black student athletes.

WILLIAM DEHART HUBBARD, TRACK 1923–1925:

“It wasn’t very fashionable for Blacks to attend college. Very few of my boyhood playmates and chums went past high school. I was the only Black on the Michigan track team for those four years and rarely competed against others, even in national meets.”

G. ANDERSON WHITE, DIVING 1953–1955:

“[Gymnastics captain Bill Winkler] invited me to the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club to work out. I’ll never forget this: His mother called to apologize to say it was a private club and they hadn’t made the preparations for a permit. It was always the same old story.”

You can hear these stories and more here: myumi.ch/K4bAW

16 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

THE HENRY FORD

KENNETH BURNLEY, TRACK 1961–1964:

“I ended up being the first Black coach ever at the University of Michigan, period, in any sport.

This, at the time, I did not particularly care for, it made me feel sick that this was 1968 and [that] this should have to occur in 1968, I felt it was ridiculous. In other words, I did not feel it was an honor, personally.”

COL L E C T ION S

THE BENTLEY’S AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENT PROJECT

By Brian Williams

5,929 AND COUNTING. That’s the number of African American students identified and verified by the Bentley’s African American Student Project. The project team is compiling a database of all African American students who attended the University of Michigan from its founding in 1817 up to the Black Action Movement in 1970. Prior to 1970, the University did not systematically track students by racial identity, meaning that all the names in the database have been compiled through meticulous research.

Some earlier projects provided the initial building blocks. In 1970, historian John Behee conducted oral histories with Black athletes as far back as the 1920s and compiled rosters of Black athletes by sport (see sidebar). Edward Littlejohn’s research in the 1980s focused on Black lawyers. Georgia A. Johnson published a book on Black Medical School graduates in 1994. The African American Student Project expanded upon those projects and found additional individuals not previously identified.

The first systematic effort involved looking at each page of every U-M yearbook through 1970, making note of anyone that looked African American. The next step involved verifying race using alumni files, archival records, and census data. Digitized issues of The Michigan Daily helped find scores of names and some benchmarking numbers on African American enrollment. Similar research in African American newspapers expanded the number of names.

Through networking with others, the team learned of additional valuable resources. A 1946 volume on African American students who had earned doctorate degrees yielded a dozen names when the team searched on Michigan. Various “who’s who” compilations likewise yielded additional Michigan

alumni. The annual education issue of the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis highlighted African American college graduates, many from Michigan.

The Bentley Library even has examples of the circular letter sent by W.E.B. Du Bois, seeking names for The Crisis in the papers of former U-M presidents. Sadly, some of these letters were answered with a response along the lines of “we don’t track students by race, so we are unable to respond.”

By the end of the first year of research, 1,700 names of African American students had been identified. African American alumni, particularly members of the historically Black Greek-letter organizations known collectively as the “Divine Nine,” helped significantly add to the database. Perhaps the biggest breakthrough was gaining a deeper understanding of housing segregation in Ann Arbor. The limited housing options for African American students largely restricted them to specific areas. Armed with a list of addresses of houses where African American students boarded, project members were able to search digitized student directories, finding hundreds of new names.

The African American Student Project is Sources for this story: Behee, John, Hail to the Victors! (Ann Arbor, currently working with developers on a MI: Ulrich’s Books, 1974). Littlejohn, Edward, and Donald L. Hobson, Black Lawyers, Law website to make the database accessiPractice, and Bar Associations­—1844 to 1970 : A Michigan History (Detroit, MI: Wolverine Bar ble online and fully searchable along with Association, 1987). Johnson, Georgia A., Black Medical Graduates of the University of Michigan information about the project and other (1872–1960 inclusive) and Selected Black Michigan Physicians (E. Lansing, MI : G. A. Johnson resources.

Pub. Co., 1994).

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 17

18 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

COL L E C T ION S

IT WAS MAN WOR The early 1970s were pivotal years for women’s equality at Michigan.

Government pressure was mounting

for U-M to give women a level playing field on campus, but the University’s all-male administration was slow to act.

Papers at the Bentley reveal how a group of determined women demanded accountability and action.

By Lara Zielin

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 19

IN OCTOBER 1970, AS CAMPUS TREES TURNED VIBRANT WITH FALL COLOR,

the University of Michigan prepared to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the admission of women. The events from October 10-11 included workshops, panel discussions, a bazaar to distribute information on local women’s groups, and a teach-in titled “The Changing Roles of Women in the U.S.” As the events progressed, what no one in attendance knew was that just days prior, on October 6, the federal government had filed a complaint with the University of Michigan alleging U-M discriminated against its women employees. The complaint, written by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), was 12 pages long with statistical evidence and exhibits to back up its allegations. It included strict demands that the University fix its ways within 30 days or risk losing federal funding.

As women at the nearby centennial events distributed their own data showcasing women’s low standing in salary and rank at the University, U-M President Robben Fleming asked HEW for more time to review the complaint. While he promised he’d look into things, he wasn’t at all confident that there was actually a problem.

And he wasn’t alone. Male colleagues who reviewed HEW’s data wrote a scathing memo saying any findings were based on “inaccurate and incomplete information” and challenged HEW to find “concrete examples” of women who had experienced discrimination.

U-M had been given 30 days. But it would take much longer than that for the enactment of high-level administrative changes that benefited women directly.

Documents at the Bentley reveal how the early 1970s were pivotal years for women’s equality at Michigan.

The University’s all-male administration was slow to acknowledge any failings, even in the face of government pressure. But a group of determined women demanded accountability and action—and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

To President Fleming and many of the University’s male faculty, the HEW complaint may have reached far-fetched conclusions, but the women who had initiated the HEW investigation had been living the complaint’s reality for years.

The Ann Arbor Focus on Equal Employment for Women, or FOCUS for short, was a group of women who had started gathering at the home of Ann Arbor lawyer Jean Ledwith King in early 1970.

They traded stories of unequal treatment, unfair pay, lack of promotion, and more.

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Like Helen Tanner, a U-M graduate with a Ph.D. in history, who had hoped to join the faculty as part of the Residential College. U-M had hired her to teach graduate students off campus, and she’d willingly shouldered the responsibilities of a full professor during a one-semester emergency. But in 1968, the department had rejected her appointment as a full professor.

At the time, according to data from The Michigan Daily, 13 percent of U-M Ph.D. degrees were earned by women, but only 7 percent of U-M’s faculty were women. An undergraduate receiving a four-year education was likely to encounter only two women professors that whole time.

“It seems clear that the U of M has become much more liberal in assisting women to acquire an education, but the present university system in Ann Arbor prevents a woman from using her education on this campus,” Tanner wrote.

King was among the first to realize that one way to force U-M to change its discriminatory ways might be new regulations from the highest levels of

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BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 21

“I DON’T THINK ANY OF

DAMNING RESULTS

22 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT PROBLEMS

(OPENING SPREAD) JEAN KING PAPERS; (PREVIOUS PAGE) PRESIDENT’S OFFICE RECORDS; (OPPOSITE PAGE) JEAN KING PAPERS

us sort of realized how intense this was, how accepted it was, how widespread it was.

Women were clearly not taken seriously.

They were not viewed as peers.”

government. An executive order signed by Prestreatment of women” as well as detailed plans to ident Johnson in 1967 made it illegal for governtake action in 30 days. ment contractors and the federal workforce to King had been right. The executive order discriminate based on sex—including educahad given them the leverage they needed. Now tional institutions like U-M. the question was: Would U-M do anything?

King understood the powerful leverage the order gave them: U-M would need to address sex discrimination or risk losing millions of dollars When he responded to the HEW complaint, in federal funding.

Fleming didn’t argue that discrimination on FOCUS drafted a two-page letter that outlined the basis of sex was wrong, but he did question their case. In an interview many years later, whether it was actually happening.

King could still recall the long list of discrimiJust a few months prior to the HEW findnatory practices: “[W]e cited the lack of women ings, in the spring of 1970, President Fleming faculty (including none in the Law School and, had negotiated with Black Action Movement as I recall, none in the Medical School), the low salaries of women members who had shut down the campus in a demand faculty, the failure to hire and to promote women faculty . . .” The to increase minority enrollment at U-M, among other list went on. concerns. Fleming had been able to broker a resolution King’s legal savvy—plus FOCUS’s connections to members of to get the campus back up and running again. the government and media—meant the letter garnered attention While Fleming was more than willing to quickly. Federal investigators were on campus within three admit that U-M had an issue giving fair and months (“really the speed of light in federal investigations,” (Opening spread) equal access to minorities, women were a King recalled) and began talking to U-M officials, as well as Daniel Zwerdling’s wholly separate, and questionable, issue.

Tanner and others. piece on sex “There are extraordinarily difficult probdiscrimination in lems in establishing criteria for what conThe Michigan Daily stitutes equal treatment,” Fleming wrote to revealed how the Esther Lardent, one of the HEW investigators, was appalled by HEW, “and we believe they are quite different highest levels of what she discovered at U-M. from the now familiar problems in the field U-M’s leadership In an interview 40 years later, Lardent says, “There was one of race.” rejected the idea comment in a file about a very distinguished woman . . . and her What’s more, even if there was a problem, of inequality behusband had accepted an appointment at Michigan, and in the Fleming told HEW that fixing the issue in 30 tween the sexes file it said, ‘and we are very lucky because she’s following her days was out of the question. He needed more on campus. husband, so we can pay her a lot less than we’d have to if she time to develop any kind of affirmative action (Previous page) were a man.’” program.

For months, U-M Lardent continues, “I don’t think any of us sort of realized HEW, however, held firm. refused to make how intense this was, how accepted it was, how widespread it Don Scott, the HEW representative compublic the federwas. Women were clearly not taken seriously. They were not municating with U-M, refused to accept al government’s viewed as peers.”

Fleming’s complaints about the 30-day timefindings showing HEW’s subsequent complaint, sent to U-M that October as table and noted that federal funds were that Michigan disthe women’s centennial was in full-swing, included four spealready on the chopping block—specifically, criminated against cific allegations: the renewal of a $400,000 contract between women, despite U-M’s Center for Population Planning and the letters like this one ✚ Wage discrepancies existed between men and U.S. Agency for International Development to asking for more women in academic positions. provide family planning services in Nepal. transparency. ✚ Sex discrimination also persisted in non-academic Fleming wrote back four days later, fuming (Opposite page) The employment practices. that the 30 days hadn’t elapsed but that Scott Feminine Mistake, was already cutting off funding. “We find this a ✚ The hiring of women for faculty positions lagged published circa capricious act,” he wrote. behind the proportion of women who had earned 1970, features data Fleming underscored U-M’s position that doctorates. and testimonials “the evidence does not support the suggesfrom the campus ✚ The admission of women to doctoral programs tion that there has been discrimination,” group PROBE about lagged behind the proportion of women earning though he agreed to make changes to existgender discrimimaster’s degrees. ing U-M programs. This included includnation, including HEW specifically cited U-M for being in violation of federal ing establishing a Commission on Women, U-M’s quota policy laws, and threatened the removal of federal contracts unless for admitting fewer adding women to U-M committees where qualified females. it provided a “written commitment to stop the discriminatory they weren’t currently represented, and

COL L E C T ION S

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 23

including women in more centralized grievance procedures.

Negotiations ensued. U-M needed a comprehensive affirmative action plan that would put the University in compliance with federal regulations. HEW needed to make a strong example of Michigan as complaints rolled in about sex discrimination at other universities.

A U-M representative flew to Washington, D.C., on December 21, and on Christmas Eve, negotiations were settled. The Michigan Daily headline on January 4 read, “HEW Accepts U Proposals to End Sex Bias in Employment.” The Detroit Free Press declared, “U-M Sex Bias Plan Historic.”

U-M became the first university in the nation to establish an affirmative action plan to ensure equity between the sexes.

But change would come slowly—and for some, not at all.

ABRASIVE PERSONALITIES In 1967, astronomers Anne Cowley and her husband, Charles, moved from the Chicago to Ann Arbor under the impression that they would both be offered faculty positions at U-M. However, when they arrived, Anne was given a job as a research associate and told that she would have to obtain grants to support her work.

By the fall of 1969, there was vocal opposition from male faculty to any notion that Anne would ever be appointed to the faculty of the Department of Astronomy. As Charles was being considered for tenure, the department published an anti-nepotism policy, which ensured only one member of a family could serve in a professional capacity.

HEW’s findings just a few short months later concluded that anti-nepotism policies such as these contributed to sex discrimination. As the University began to implement affirmative action standards, the department reversed its anti-nepotism policy and, by 1971, Anne’s name was again floated for a faculty appointment. The department took a vote and rejected her 9-1.

Anne was no stranger to sex discrimination. At one point in her career, she said that the president of the American Astronomical Society sexually assaulted her in an elevator. “I never dared to complain since he had a huge amount of power over me and could have ended my career,” she later recalled.

After the HEW report was released and the Commission on Women established, Anne submitted formal complaints about her treatment— specifically her faculty appointment and her salary. The Commission on Women agreed her complaint had merit, but the Department of Astronomy wouldn’t budge.

When she appealed again, a three-person, all-male Complaint Appeals Committee heard her case and sided with the department citing, in part, feelings that her “personality was abrasive and her presence in the Department was divisive.”

Fleming ratified the decision.

It would take nearly a decade before U-M would offer Anne a position as full professor. But it came too late.

In 1983, Anne was part of an international research team that made a breakthrough discovery confirming the existence of multiple black holes in space. She was heralded for the findings and accepted a position at Arizona State University, where she is now a professor emerita.

In 1984, Cowley told the Daily, “I think the situation at the University of Michigan is scandalous,” and that efforts to increase the number of women faculty members were like “beating your head against the wall because the administration doesn’t care.”

24 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

DOCUMENTING CHANGE The most comprehensive chronicle of this era at Michigan is a book by U-M alumna Sara Fitzgerald titled Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX (University of Michigan Press, 2020).

Fitzgerald was the first female editor of The Michigan Daily and was on campus when the HEW complaint was released. She recalls knowing this was a big moment for the University, and that the story wasn’t going to end any time soon. “We had a sense of needing to train younger reporters to understand this story so that once we graduated, people wouldn’t lose interest. I think it was a big deal to me because there was so much going on with the women’s movement in the 1970s. It was an empowering time to come out of college and feel like the world was changing.”

Over her career, Fitzgerald worked for the Washington Post and helped start a consulting company. Conquering Heroines was released in 2020—marking the 50-year anniversary of the HEW complaint and the 150year anniversary of the admission of women to campus.

Fitzgerald drew on multiple Bentley resources for her book, including departmental records, recorded oral histories with women leaders during this time such as Jean King, as well as an oral history with President Fleming.

Fleming’s own records of this time are preserved in his presidential papers, and the campus’s reactions to events are preserved in the now-digitized Michigan Daily.

“I wanted to understand how all this was playing out in the different corners of the University,” Fitzgerald says. “I wanted to explore new avenues and answer questions we hadn’t been able to answer in the ’70s.”

For example, she looked at what conversations were taking place at the highest levels of leadership, or how frightened Michigan administrators were about the possibility that their federal contracts could be held up.

Fitzgerald ends the book with data about how much work is still left to be done. At U-M, the proportion of women who are faculty chairs has gone down in recent years. For the 2017–2018 academic year, the average salary of a male full professor was $173,046 compared with $160,271 for a woman. For lecturers, women at U-M make 80 percent of what their male counterparts do, “the approximate pay gap between men and women generally in the United States,” Fitzgerald notes.

“Part of the reason I wrote the book is to remind young women that it wasn’t so long ago that these things were happening,” Fitzgerald says. “There’s concern that women don’t think these are problems anymore.”

Sources:

Sources used for this story include Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX by Sara Fitzgerald, as well as several Bentley collections including U-M presidential papers (specifically President Fleming’s dedicated HEW folder), Regents’ proceedings, oral histories from the Academic Women’s Caucus, and Eric A. Stein’s recorded interviews for his graduate work titled Women’s Activism Against Sex Discrimination: The 1970 HEW Investigation of the University of Michigan. Online resources include the digitized Michigan Daily as well as documents and commentary compiled by Sara Fitzgerald titled “What Factors Led to the Success of the Historic 1970 Sex Discrimination Complaint Filed against the University of Michigan?”

From the Top Early aerial photos of U-M’s campus were taken by an aviation pioneer.

By Lara Zielin

WHEN TALBERT ABRAMS received his pilot’s license at age 21, it was signed by none other than one of the famous first-to-flight siblings, Orville Wright.

Abrams, originally from Tekonsha, Michigan, enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War I, and became interested in aerial photography when his squadron took aerial images of suspected enemy activity on the island of Haiti.

In 1923, Abrams married Leota Pearl Fry, and that same year they founded the Aerial Survey Corporation in Lansing, Michigan.

The company conducted aerial mapping all over the world for governments and businesses and—you guessed it—universities.

Several of Abrams’ images of the University of Michigan campus, commissioned for various units during the late 1920s and early 1930s, have been digitized and are available in the Bentley’s online Image Bank.

The Bentley also holds numerous photographic negatives from the Aerial Survey Corporation, which include aerial images of Michigan Stadium and several views of campus, all taken on October 5, 1940.

Abrams died on August 26, 1990, but the Aerial Survey Corporation continues to operate today.

Aerial Survey Corporation photos archived at the Bentley are open to the public.

I N T H E S TA C K S

COL L E C T ION S

I N T H E S TA C K S In April 1920, two leading astronomers met on stage in front of a packed audience at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. They went headto-head defending their respective “models” of the universe. In the end, they were both right . . . sort of.

The Great Debate

By Robert Havey

WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE? HOW BIG IS IT? WHAT IS OUR PLACE IN IT? Astronomers have been trying to answer these questions for centuries, from Aristotle to Ptolemy to Copernicus. By the 1800s, advances in telescope technology and scientific techniques led to a consensus that the Earth orbited a sun, and that our solar system was part of a band of stars known as the Milky Way. If you asked a 19th-century astronomer, they would say the sun is at the center of the universe, which measures just 30,000 light years across.

In 1908, Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovered a technique that allowed for a much more accurate measurement of the distance of stars from Earth. Using a variable pulsating star, a special type of star that changes its brightness at a regular interval, as well as trigonometry, astronomers discovered that galaxies they thought were “close neighbors” were in fact very, very far away. Suddenly the universe was too big to fit into our idea of it.

Enter the debaters: astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis. By 1920, both men had published papers arguing their perspective on what the new “model” of the universe should be. The National Academy of Sciences invited them to present their findings at a formal event on April 26, 1920 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Shapley, an astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory, presented first. While being a chance for the young scientist to make his mark, it was also a job interview of sorts. Shapley was a candidate for

director at the Harvard College Observatory and his potential future colleagues were in attendance.

Shapley used Leavitt’s technique to find the distance of groups of stars called “globular clusters” and with that data, make a better map of the Milky Way. His conclusion was that the Milky Way, and therefore the universe, was 100,000 light years across, 10 times larger than the previous best estimate. Also, since more of the clusters appeared in one part of the sky, our solar system was not in the center of this new map.

Next up was Curtis, the director of the Lick Observatory and future director of U-M’s Detroit Observatory. Unlike Shapley, Curtis didn’t just read his paper, but presented it, rarely looking at his written notes.

Curtis had used the light of new stars (nova) in the Andromeda Nebulae to estimate their distance from Earth to be an incredible 500,000 light years. Because that distance is so much larger than all other estimates of the size of the Milky Way, Curtis argued that observed galaxies weren’t part of the Milky Way at all and instead were separate galaxies all their own. The universe comprised many “island universes” like Andromeda and the Milky Way. Curtis argued that because there were so many of these “island universes,” they

(Opposite page, top) The Pleiades star cluster, photographed with the Heber D. Curtis Schmidt Telescope at the Portage Lake Observatory, in 1951.

(Opposite and this page, bottom) Worksite for the 1905 solar eclipse expedition in Cartwright, Canada, led by Heber Curtis.

couldn’t be as large as Shapley estimated the Milky Way to be. He maintained that the sizes for Andromeda, the Milky Way, and other galaxies were all probably about 30,000 light years in diameter.

So who won? After the debate Curtis wrote to his family: “Debate went off fine in Washington, and I have been assured that I came out considerably in front.”

In his memoir, Shapley wrote “Curtis was right partly, and I was right partly,” although he admitted, “Curtis did a moderately good job.”

We now know that both men were about half right. Shapley’s map of the Milky Way was much more accurate: the actual size is around 150–200 light years across, and our solar system is not at its center.

Curtis’s contention that there are many different “island universes,” not just our Milky Way, turned out to be correct also, although he still underestimated the sizes of those universes.

Much like past attempts to answer the big questions of astronomy, the Shapley-Curtis debate didn’t solve the mystery, but it did provide better, less wrong answers to improve upon.

If you asked an astronomer today, most would say the size of the (observable) universe is about 93 billion light years and our sun is one of the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is one of the two trillion galaxies. Enough is still unknown that another Great Debate could be held today, maybe on “What is Dark Matter?” or “Are there multiple universes?”

Heber Curtis’s papers, including his 1920 speech titled “Island Universes,” are open to researchers at the Bentley Historical Library.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 27

I N T H E S TA C K S

COL L E C T ION S

PROFILES

Scratching the Surface To write his new memoir, multimedia journalist and educator Harvey Ovshinsky had to research his own collection at the Bentley—and ultimately ask himself the tough questions he’d been asking others as a journalist for years.

By Dan Shine

28 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

HARVEY OVSHINSKY LIKES TO JOKE that it took him four

years to write his book. “Two years to write a bad book, and two years to write a good one,” he says.

But when he completed his memoir, Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling (WSU Press, 2021), he says he had an out-of-body experience as he floated above his latest work and his life. He reflected on the many hats he has worn: underground newspaper publisher, writer, radio news director, documentary filmmaker, teacher.

Ovshinsky’s collection at the Bentley features images from his student days at U-M through myriad aspects of his career.

(Clockwise from top left) Ovshinsky at an anti-war demonstration in

1965; receiving an Emmy Award in 1993; on the cover of Detroit’s Metro Times newspaper in 1987; with an unidentified woman at an anti-war demonstration in 1966; and with an interview subject in an undated photo.

“By God,” Ovshinsky thought to himself, “it’s a lot of dots I connected.” And he says chronicling his life’s work and imparting lessons in his book might not have happened if not for the Bentley Historical Library. At the very least, it would have likely taken more than four years.

“The Bentley was essential to the development of the book,” Ovshinsky says.

WHY NOT ME? The library and Ovshinsky came together soon after his father—famed engineer, scientist, and inventor Stanford Ovshinsky—died in 2012. Ovshinsky worked with the Bentley on donating his father’s papers, and asked if the library would be interested in his as well.

“I’m not my father, but I had a life,” says Ovshinsky, a Peabody- and Emmy-award winning documentarian who founded the long-running underground Detroit newspaper The Fifth Estate.

Bentley staff reviewed Ovshinsky’s work and decided his papers would be a nice addition to the archives.

“My personality is type A,” he says. “I gave them everything they needed and more—and I organized it.”

In addition to noting the print and digital materials in each box, Ovshinsky wrote detailed backstories sprinkled with the occasional “fun fact” on the contents of each. Such as the time his elementary school music teacher asked him to not sing so loudly, spurring his lifelong passion of finding his voice and helping others do the same. Or the junior high journalism teacher he had a crush on, who first introduced him to radio.

And the “life lessons” he imparts as part of Box 13, which includes his unproduced or unpublished projects.

“Just because a story or a project is never produced doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t matter or wasn’t important,” Ovshinsky writes.

THE BENTLEY AS A BEACON This exhaustive accounting was the “north star” that guided his writing. Without the Bentley accepting his papers and without him then putting together this comprehensive inventory, writing his memoir would have been more difficult, he says.

“It made it much easier to make it into a narrative that worked not only as a historical document, but also as a book,” Ovshinsky says. “I really wanted it to resonate for other people who shared my interest in creativity, in storytelling, and in truth telling. And I think I accomplished that.”

Others agree.

National Public Radio journalist Don Gonyea, who worked with Ovshinsky in Detroit before being moved to a national politics beat in Washington, wrote the book’s foreword. He praises Ovshinsky for being an “able and worthy guide” as he “searches for answers within himself—extracting the same kind of honest, human observations that he has long worked to coax out of others.”

ANSWERING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS During the four-year research and writing process, Ovshinsky—who lives in Ann Arbor, not far from the Bentley—visited his collection at least a dozen times.

“The book is very detailed—a lot of quotations and recreations of dialogue and dates and a lot of stuff that I didn't have off the top of my head. But the Bentley had my memory—it had my letters and my father’s letters.”

Ovshinsky says a goal of the book was to find out what his life’s work was really about. He said he could have gone the easy route and published a straight memoir, “a selfie—me, me, me,” he says. Instead, he treated himself like one of his documentary subjects, “a character named Harvey.”

“I know what the questions are,” he says. “My challenge has always been to come up with the answers. I spent my entire life in print, on radio, on television, asking other people questions. Essentially spinning my yarn with their threads, telling my story with their answers.

“Well, the shoe’s on the other foot,” he says. “I have to tell my story with my questions and—guess what, Harvey—you’ve got to answer those questions.

“I want [readers] to learn what I learned the hard way,” he says, “on how to pull off this life of creativity, of how to endure, how to persevere, how to survive, and how to thrive.”

Ovshinsky hopes to share the book far and wide to college and high school students to impart the lessons he did over a lifetime of storytelling.

CLIMBING HIGHER As a young boy, Ovshinsky’s father, a physicist, would take him to Detroit Metropolitan Airport to watch the airplanes take off. He’d tell his young son the hardest part of flying was the takeoff, the lift, because of the energy required. It required more energy to take off, the scientist told his son, than it did to fly the airplane.

Ovshinsky says he didn’t understand then what his father was telling him.

But now it might be an apt metaphor after writing his book.

“The Bentley made my takeoff, it made my lift, a lot easier,” he says. “I feel bad for writers who have to start from scratch.”

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 29

PROFILES

COL L E C T ION S

B E N T L EY U N B O U N D

In 1957, the University of Michigan campus sported a fully functional nuclear reactor, complete with a 55,000gallon glowing reactor pool.

Bentley collections help tell the story of why the reactor was built—and what happened to it.

M Glow Blue

By Madeleine Bradford

Phoenix-funded 1952 creation of the “bubble chamber,” a vessel of superheated liquid through which the delicate, spiraling paths of The Memorial Phoenix Project, anyway. subatomic particles can be traced, earned U-M Physics Professor World War II had just ended. Facing what they hoped would be Donald Glaser the 1960 Nobel Prize. an era of peace, U-M also faced tragedy—the loss of 585 students, Over the years, however, justifying the costs of running the reacfaculty, and staff members. tor became more and more difficult. By 2000, academic uses of the With that loss came a crucial question: How do you memorialreactor declined; governmental and industrial ones began taking ize that many lives? their place. The University faced a hard decision.

According to The Michigan Daily, alumni didn’t want a “mere The project was too important to the U-M community to allow it mound of stone, the purpose of which would soon be forgotten.” to die. The Phoenix Project prepared to undergo a transformation Enter alumnus Fred J. Smith. to match its namesake. Reactor operations stopped in 2003.

Everyone had seen the destructive side of nuclear research, but Decommissioning was a complicated process. he thought that surely it had constructive potential, too. What Which walls had tools hung on? Which surfaces had any radiaabout a functional memorial? What if the University used nuclear tion touched? These were the questions asked as the careful disenergy to help, rather than harm? assembly began. Lists were made. Soil and groundwater were The idea sparked one of the U-M’s first major fundraising camsampled and tested. Thousands of cubic feet of high-density conpaigns. Millions of dollars of donations later, including a large crete were stripped from the empty pool where the reactor core was grant from the Ford Motor Co., the idea became a reality. U-M had once suspended. created a project devoted to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, rising Once the building returned to levels of radiation deemed approfrom the ashes of war. priate by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it was reopened They called it the Memorial Phoenix Project. for use. The old nuclear reactor area, renovated, now serves as lab Officially established in 1948, it was a living, continuous work, space for Nuclear Engineering research, with thick walls perfect inviting researchers from all corners of the University. The new for the work.

Memorial Phoenix Laboratory rose as one of the earliest buildings on In 2013, the greenhouse of the Phoenix Memorial Laboratory North Campus, on what is now Bonisteel Boulevard. Construction was replaced with a new, modern addition. Still, if you go into the began in the spring of 1954, and continued through 1956. Even once it Laboratory lobby, you will see two enormous gray plaques on the was built, the reactor was predicted to take “six months or a year” to wall. One lists donors, whose belief in the Memorial Phoenix Projreach full power, before any studies could begin. ect made it real.

Up went lab spaces, a greenhouse, and, at the end furthest The other plaque shares the names of staff, faculty, and stufrom the road, the Ford Nuclear Reactor. In 1957, “the beast,” as a dents who gave their lives in World War II, featuring the words: few operators had taken to affectionately calling it, became fully “Dedicated to the study of peaceful uses of atomic energy.” operational.

The Memorial Phoenix Project became the Michigan Memo“It worked!” announced a 1957 memo to the laboratory staff. Operrial Phoenix Energy Institute in 2006, later shortating at two megawatts of power, the “icy blue glow” ened to the Energy Institute. Through cleaner energy, of the more than 55,000 gallon reactor pool (a prod(Left) The improved batteries and fuels, and better systems of uct of Cherenkov radiation emanating from its fuel 55,000-gallon transportation, the Energy Institute is still trying to rods), would inspire the motto of the reactor workers: reactor pool of improve the world today. It serves—much the way the “M-Glow Blue!” the Ford Nuclear Memorial Phoenix Project did—as an interdisciplinary Project proposals flooded in—from archaeologists Reactor. hub for energy research at U-M. hoping to date coins and bones, to botanists hoping (This page) ArchiA collection of Memorial Phoenix Project files is to study the effects of radiation exposure on plants, to tect’s drawing of located at the Bentley Historical Library with infordoctors hoping to explore cures using radiant energy. the Phoenix Memation about the projects it funded, the history of Cancer treatment, bone grafts, freshwater musmorial Laboratory, its founding, and even a hand-drawn draft of sels, medieval coins, and an Egyptian mummy were built in 1956. the logo: a round nest of flames, and just some of the more than 800 subjects that from it, the phoenix still rising. the Phoenix Project helped to study. It spurred invention, too; the

(OPPOSITE PAGE) HS7342; (THIS PAGE) HS2059

IN 1947, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN HATCHED A PHOENIX.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 31

B E N T L EY U N B O U N D

COL L E C T ION S

B E N T L EY U N B O U N D

An Engine for Good THE STRANGE CONTRAPTION PICTURED HERE isn’t a time machine. It’s actually a “Seater-Meter,” invented by Engineering Professor Walter E. Lay in 1940 to improve automobile seats. A series of springs behind the back, and below the seat, measured weight distribution and pressure, and different components could raise, lower, and tilt. Lay’s eldest daughter, Eileen, grins behind the fake wheel.

“Nobody had done fundamental work on seats, so we built a universal test seat,” Lay said of the device. Lay didn’t just spend his career sitting around, however; he inspired generations of engineers through years of work testing the aerodynamics of cars and taking early measurements of automobile noise pollution.

Born to a farming family in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, Lay was fascinated by engines—their functions, their valves, and especially their “put-chug” noises, according to a newspaper clipping from his collection. He left the farm in 1910 and headed to the University of Michigan. After a brief 1912 interlude working at the Packard Motor Company, he returned to U-M in 1913, in time for the University’s first

32 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

automotive course.

Back then, automobiles were studied in the foundry area of the old West Engineering Annex, and an old wooden lean-to with a sloped roof, jokingly called “the cow shed.” Volume two of Lay’s scrapbooks at the Bentley describes him wearing galoshes and raincoats inside when it rained. The roof leaked. The wooden “lab” was also a fire risk: he remembered “running pell mell for the fire extinguishers.” (In 1937, the lean-to would partially burn down.)

After graduating, and working as a teaching assistant, Lay became a Major in the Army Ordnance Corps at U-M, training mechanics during World War I. As a professor post-war, he was a student favorite, known for telling the “snazziest” stories in his classes.

He was also known for his humor and kindness. In a letter, one student remembered him giving “argyle socks and fancy neckties” to his assistants for holidays.

Lay even won the “Spoofun” cup, a tin funnel with spoons for handles, given to the professor who was the best sport about being mocked, or “roasted,” at an Engineering dinner.

Living with wife Thyrza, two daughters, his wife’s father, and his wife’s father’s hunting dogs (14 champion beagles and, later, six springer spaniels) meant that home was just as lively as work. Fun, for Lay, included reading the encyclopedia at breakfast, explaining mechanics at dinner, singing with friends, building rock gardens, and growing “the largest raspberries and radishes around.”

His favorite pastime, though, was dreaming up a new, safer, automotive laboratory.

The old lab’s 1943 addition wasn’t enough.

He drew and redrew schematics for years.

In 1956, a new lab was finally built on North Campus; volume two of Professor Lay’s scrapbooks called it his “baby in living concrete and steel.” A bronze bust of Lay was funded by his former students to decorate the space, sculpted by Carleton Angell.

Lay’s daughter Eileen described her father as “powered by a spirit always driven to know the unknown—to cross another frontier—to look for a new and better way.”

His name still lives on in the title of today’s Walter E. Lay Automotive Engineering Laboratory, and his life’s work can be perused at the Bentley in the Walter E. Lay papers.

HS4909

By Madeleine Bradford

COLLECTIONS, the magazine of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, is published twice each year.

Terrence J. McDonald Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Professor of History and Director Nancy Bartlett Associate Director Lara Zielin Editorial Director Robert Havey Communications Specialist Patricia Claydon, Ballistic Creative Art Direction/Design Copyright ©2021 Regents of the University of Michigan ARTICLES MAY BE REPRINTED BY OBTAINING PERMISSION FROM: Editor, Bentley Historical Library 1150 Beal Avenue Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2113 PLEASE DIRECT EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE TO: laram@umich.edu 734-936-1342 Regents of the University of Michigan Jordan B. Acker, Huntington Woods Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor Sarah Hubbard, Okemos Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor Mark S. Schlissel, ex officio The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office for Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-6471388, institutional.equity@umich.edu. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

Land Acknowledgment Statement The Bentley Historical Library acknowledges that coerced cessions of land by the Anishnaabeg and Wyandot made the University of Michigan possible, and we seek to reaffirm the ancestral and contemporary ties of these peoples to the lands where the University now stands.

Giving New Life to Historic Instruments HELP INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF STARGAZERS.

The Detroit Observatory’s original, 165-year-old instruments can help the next generation of students learn and apply science that’s still relevant today. But many of the instruments need to be restored and conserved.

For example, by adding a spectrograph to the Fitz telescope, students could learn how statistical science is applied. Or students could use the Meridian Circle telescope to learn how to deduce the composition of a star or planet.

The spirit of science and discovery is alive and well at the Detroit Observatory.

PLEASE USE THE ENCLOSED ENVELOPE OR GIVE ONLINE TODAY.

bentley.umich.edu/giving 734-764-3482

A B O U T T H E B E N T L EY

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 1150 BEAL AVENUE ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 48109-2113

Where Michigan’s History Lives The Bentley Historical Library is now open by appointment only for U-M faculty, students, and staff. The library’s Reference team will continue to receive and respond to remote requests from researchers who are not affiliated with the University, but the ability to check physical collections remains limited and it may take staff some time to respond.

MAKE A RESEARCH REQUEST Bentley.ref@umich.edu EXPLORE COLLECTIONS AND FINDING AIDS ONLINE bentley.umich.edu FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL facebook.com/bentleyhistoricallibrary @umichbentley @umichbentley MAKE A GIFT bentley.umich.edu/giving 734-764-3482

HAND SHAKING AND RECORD BREAKING Two of the best athletes in the world, Eddie Tolan (left) and Willis Ward (center) were on hand to witness Jesse Owens (right) break four world records at Ferry Field on May 25, 1935. While Owens went on to Olympic glory in 1936, Ward, who had beaten Owens in two events earlier that year, retired from competition. What happened to drive Ward from sports? Read his story on page 10.