Collections Magazine Fall 2016

Collections A p u b l i c at i o n o f t h e B e n t l e y H i s t o r i c a l L i b r a r y at t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f M i c h i g a n

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Could clues from the Bentley’s archives help solve the 1945 murder of State Senator Warren Hooper?

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Contents D IRECTOR’S NOTES 1 – Let Every Story be Told A BRI D GE M ENTS 2 – Sound Bites from the Stacks 1 1 5 0 BEA L 16 – Researching the Truth 17 – For the Record RE FERENCES 18 – Camp Collection 19 – Philanthropic Footsteps CATHO LEPISTEM I A D 20 – Building Blocks

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State Senator Warren Hooper was shot dead four days before he could testify before a grand jury in 1945. One of Michigan’s most notorious unsolved murders features gangsters, corruption politicians, and—yep, you guessed it—the Bentley Historical Library.

B ENTLEY U NB OU ND 22 – “That Stupid Display” 24 – The Bearded Barnstormers

of Benton Harbor

On the Cover Before computers, criminal databases, DNA testing, cell phones and more, there was the oldfashioned police board, where detectives could try to visualize links between evidence and suspects.

Here, we imagine what such a board might have looked like in the murder investigation of State Senator Warren Hooper. Read the full story about this infamous unsolved crime on page four.

Cover design by Hammond Design

Corrections In our Fall 2015 issue, we erroneously listed liver cancer among the causes of Jack Kevorkian’s death.

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Cornelia Kennedy spent her entire illustrious career in law proving she belonged. From the first woman on the federal bench in Michigan to one of the first female district judges to the short list of Supreme Court nominees.

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Remixing Detroit History 1 2 Music journalist Dan Sicko saw local musicians turn Detroit’s crumbling past and uneasy present into music that sounded like the future. His life’s work was to document the creation of techno music in his home town.

Our Spring 2016 issue noted that Jim Toy marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C., in 1963, which was incorrect.

Toy marched with King in Detroit that year.

Let Every Story be Told Archiving the history of African American students at the University of Michigan

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n her response to a University of Michigan alumnae survey in 1924, Emily A. Harper of Detroit, member of the “Literary” class of 1896, wrote: “Youth is our period of superlatives and I find my home letters of those days full of ‘the very best time’ as a characterization of each event, but looking back from my sober middle age, I recall the thrill that came when I chanced to meet Pres. Angell a week after I matriculated and he called me by my name! Poor innocent, it was not till years later that I realized that perhaps it was not difficult to remember the name of the one brown girl in a group of several hundred new students. At the time I was very happy to know that the president knew me.”

In 1924, this daughter of a Detroit barber—by then Mrs. Emily H. Williams—was a distinguished African American leader, having served as a department head in both the National Association of Colored Women and the International Association of Women of the Darker Races. She was now working as an instructor of English at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Until recently, her story and those of hundreds of other African American students at Michigan had been lost in time.

The Bentley Historical Library is setting out to correct that by collecting the names and all available information on the experiences of African Americans who attended the University between Photos

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(Left) Scott Soderberg, Michigan Photography; (right) HS11706

its founding and 1940. Existing records of the Alumni Association contain the names of most of those who came after that date.

Here is what we think we know: The first African American student appears to have been Samuel Codes Watson, who was enrolled in the Medical Department for two years beginning in 1853. It was not until 1868 that other African Americans enrolled: John Summerfield Davidson of Pontiac and Gabriel Franklin Hargo of Adrian enrolled in the Literary and Law Departments, respectively. The first female African American student admitted to the University was likely Mary Henrietta Graham in 1876.

A master’s thesis written in 1940 suggested that there were 100 African American students on the campus that year. There is evidence of a “colored students club” as early as 1902, and a thriving separate social life organized around chapters of African American fraternities and sororities beginning with Alpha Phi Alpha in 1909. A group of African American and white students organized the “Negro-Caucasian Club” in 1925 in part to question the University’s own policies that segregated dances and the swimming pool in the Michigan Union.

Katherine Brown, who was the only African American woman in her Medical School class of 1898, wrote that “some experiences were exceedingly bitter, immensely so as I view them after more than a quarter of a century.

But they taught me my capacity for endurance.”

The stories will be mixed, but we need them all and we welcome your help. If you are a member of an organization that kept lists of African American students at the University before 1940, the Bentley Historical Library would be pleased to have them. If members of your African American family attended the University, then we would be grateful to hear about them.

We will report back as the work progresses. n Terrence J. McDonald Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Professor of History and Director

Mary Henrietta Graham was likely the first female African American student at U-M.

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Abridgements Do you drink anything but water? Yes. If so, what is your favorite beverage?

I love my lager beer and my whiskey dear.

O.S. Brigham

Do you ever violate the third commandment?

What is it? I guess not.

Do you ever attempt to play music? Often.

Do you succeed?

My enemies say no.

Do you wear a beard?

Oh! Yes. If so, in what style?

Sides and mustachio!

Are you married, engaged, or free for future choice? I live in a free country. In any of these cases, do you like the situation? “Give me liberty, or give me death!”

Anna M. Chandler

Louis B. King

Don Alonzo Matthews

Mary Downing Sheldon

Survey Says! In 1874, class historian Calvin Thomas asked each of his classmates to fill out a 50-answer questionnaire. Seventy-three respondents weighed in on everything from beards to drinking to co-education (the class of 1874

was the first to have women enrolled from the start of the academic year to its completion). Several albums from the class of 1874 contain individual portraits of many of the respondents, allowing the Bentley to put a face to the survey responses.

Attendees from these institutions and many more came to “Connecting Uses, Pushing Limits,” a Bentley-hosted conference this past July. More than 895 current and prospective users of a national registration and circulation system called Aeon came to learn, teach, and converse about the technology.

Hillary Memory Before she was on the campaign trail herself as the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton came to campus with her husband, Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, in October 1992. They appeared in front of an estimated crowd of 13,000, as Bill stumped for the election with Michigan Senator Carl Levin looking on.

19591986 Years spanning the Tecumseh Community Health Study, which investigated health and disease in the self-contained location of Tecumseh, Michigan. The findings helped shed light on how genetic and behavioral risk factors could be associated with conditions such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, and more. The records are now at the Bentley and are open for research.

July 26, 1971 Date of the Apollo 15 mission launch, the fourth lunar mission to land on the moon and the only mission to have three Michigan astronauts aboard.

James Irwin, David Scott, and Alfred Worden signed this cover of the Michigan Alumnus announcing the mission, which just celebrated its 45-year anniversary.

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@UmichBentley: We hit 2,000 followers!

Thank you so much to all the history buffs out there for making this possible!

Number of Bentley images now in U-M President Mark Schlissel’s home for a special Bicentennial exhibit, which will run through 2017. The images selected include rarely seen color photos from John F. Kennedy’s famous Peace Corps speech on the steps of the Michigan Union on October 14, 1960, taken by U-M student Frederick L. Shippey.

#ThrowbackThursday Before he was an All-Star baseball player for the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter was a Wolverine.

Jeter was offered a scholarship to play for Michigan Baseball, but opted instead to go pro.

He did, however, still come to Ann Arbor to take classes during the offseason. Jeter is pictured here in his Couzens Hall dorm room in this November 1992 Michigan Daily photo credited to Kavaljauskas.

Say Cheese More than 17,000 digitized images have been added to the Bentley online photo database—including this picture of playwright and U-M alumnus Arthur Miller in 1949, the same year he wrote The Crucible—bringing the total to more than 25,000.

Gotta Catch ’Em All! Catch your Pokémon, then train them at the Bentley Historical Library, which is a Pokémon gym in the new Pokémon Go mobile game app. Does your Bulbasaur

have a high CP

for battle?

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t was a bright, bitterly cold January day. The sun glinted off the fresh snow covering the Michigan countryside as State Senator Warren Hooper drove along highway M-99 from his office in Lansing to his home in Albion. He may have squinted against the blinding white landscape all around him, perhaps not at first seeing the car that would force him into the opposite lane. There were no oncoming cars since, after such a brutal spell of snow and cold, the roads were largely deserted.

By Lara Zielin

Photos n (Following the pins left to right) Jackson Citizen Patriot; courtesy of the Michigan

State Police; Detroit Free Press, 1944; the Donald Leonard Collection, box 18, clippings folder.

(Facing page) The Donald Leonard Collection, box 18, case files 1945-1946 folder.

Hooper skidded to a stop, his tires partially in snow, partially on pavement.

The driver’s side door was yanked open, and Hooper was forced at gunpoint into the passenger seat. Hooper’s cigarette fell from his mouth as his hat was pulled down over his eyes, likely starting a small fire in the car. He may have screamed. Or perhaps he was simply too stunned to do anything much, not even turn his head as a bullet entered his left cheek, near the corner of his eye. Another bullet lodged behind his left ear. And another shattered through the top of his head. The assailant fled, and Hooper was left slumped in his seat on the side of the road. He was discovered by a feed elevator operator driving by a little while later.

The January 11, 1945 murder of Warren Hooper remains one of the most

sensational murder cases in Michigan, and is unsolved to this day. In spite of massive state resources applied to catching the killer and countless leads, the trigger man never faced a jury for murder. What is certain about Hooper’s killing, however, is that it revealed a tangled web of conspiracy, corruption, and politics in Michigan.

Hooper was killed four days before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury about taking a bribe to alter a horse-racing bill. His testimony would directly implicate millionaire Frank McKay, a former state treasurer and prominent Republican who was the subject of three federal grand jury probes beginning in 1940.

Years later, in 1954, McKay would vigorously back a little-known Republican nominee for governor named Donald Leonard. Leonard was the former police commissioner who took over the Hooper murder case in 1947, increasing speculation that the Hooper murder remained unsolved not because of lack of evidence, but because some people simply wanted it that way.

Remarkably, the Bentley Historical Library has the files of McKay as well as Leonard, plus those of special prosecutor Kim Sigler, who fought for years to bring McKay to justice and tie him to the Hooper murder, and who would later become Michigan’s governor. The Bentley has so much material, in fact, that the Michigan State Police contacted the Library to request access to files when they reopened the Hooper murder case in 1989.

So don your fedora, grab a highball, and read all about how the Bentley sits at the heart of an unsolved mystery more than 70 years in the making.

Clues, Convicts, and Conspiracies

In 1945, news of Hooper’s murder traveled quickly, making headlines locally and nationally. Hooper had been Sigler’s key witness in a grand jury probe designed to put corrupt politicians behind bars. Armed with a renewed tenacity after Hooper’s death, Sigler now worked alongside police to piece together who pulled the trigger—and to tie it all back to McKay. One of the first big breaks in the case came on January 13, when a 48-year-old grocery salesman named Harry Snyder claimed to have seen a maroon car blocking Hooper’s car on the highway, along with two men at the scene. In the Bentley archives is the map Snyder drew for law enforcement (see sketch above), showing how he drove up to the maroon car and got a good look at the fellow behind the wheel, and how he then spotted a second man at Hooper’s car. “It was as if [the second man] was talking to this fellow setting in the car, which afterwards I found out was the

dead fellow, see,” Snyder told police. “The dead fellow sat with his head down like a drunk would.”

Snyder’s testimony was useful, but not concrete enough to lead to arrests. Then, in March, police caught another break when Sam Abramowitz, a convict with ties to Detroit’s Purple Gang, claimed that he and others had been hired by the head of the Purple Gang, Harry Fleisher, to kill Hooper.

By May, Harry Fleisher and his brother, Sammy, plus Detroit saloon operator Mike Selik and a smalltime gambler named Pete Mahoney, were all charged with conspiring to kill Hooper. Abramowitz had turned state’s witness, pointing the finger at all the other men in exchange for immunity.

All four men pled not guilty and went to trial in July 1945, the courtroom hot and packed. Edward Kennedy Jr., defense counsel for Fleisher and Selik, repeatedly pointed out that Abramowitz had the same size feet as the tracks found at the murder scene, and that Sigler may well have given immunity to the assassin. “I really think you have made a mistake in this case, Kim,” he told Sigler. “I really do.”

The Perfect Alibi

In spite of any doubts raised, the Fleishers, Selik, and Mahoney were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to four-to-five years in Jackson State Prison. But the charge of conspiracy didn’t account for who pulled the trigger and paid for the hit.

(previous page, following the pins left to right) Warren Hooper used this portrait in his campaign materials when he successfully ran for Michigan state senator; a photo of Hooper’s burned car at the crime scene, taken by police; politician Frank McKay at the Republican National Convention in 1944; and a 1945 news clipping of the Hooper murder investigation. (this page) Witness Harry Snyder drew a map for police showing how he came upon the Hooper murder scene just after Hooper had been shot. He thought Hooper was slumped over because he was drunk. Snyder placed a maroon car at the scene, which authorities later suspected belonged to deputy prison warden D.C. Pettit.

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That question waited as Sigler tried again to nab McKay, putting him before the grand jury for conspiracy to violate state liquor laws. McKay was found not guilty, but Sigler’s name was nearly a household one by now, which no doubt helped him successfully run for governor of Michigan in 1946.

Sigler’s priorities shifted as governor, and the case stayed on the backburner until 1947, when inmates from the Southern Michigan Prison (now the Michigan State Prison) came forward with an incredible tale. Herman “Frenchie” Faubert and Mitchell Bonkowski told police that criminals—including Fleisher and Selik—were recruited to kill Hooper, and that they borrowed the maroon car of deputy prison warden D.C. Pettit to get to Hooper that day on highway M-99 (in addition to a second prison vehicle). There was, they said, an entire organized system of criminals going in and out of the prison with the help of guards, wardens, and even politicians, leaving many of them with the perfect alibi of being behind bars.

Leonard was skeptical about the tale, and reluctant to believe a convicted criminal. But Detroit Inspector George Kimball thought the case solved, and told the press as much. Newspaper headlines went back and forth about the veracity of the testimony, and Pettit was brought in for questioning multiple times. Police even searched for the murder weapon on his farm. Interestingly, all prison records for official car use on the day of Hooper’s murder were found missing.

“The Michigan Department of State Police has recently reactivated the [Hooper] investigation and would like the University of Michigan to return any items which are official State Police documents to aid us in our investigation,” wrote Michigan State Police Director R.T. Davis in a letter to the Bentley dated March 9, 1989.

The Bentley digitized everything in the Donald Leonard files and sent it to Detective Sargent Chet Wilson, who spoke to the Bentley recently from his home in Traverse City.

“I came to a different conclusion than the [Three Bullets] authors,” says the now-retired Wilson. When the case was re-opened, he researched old police records and identified people connected to the murder who were still alive. One in particular stands out in his mind: Mike Selik.

Wilson interviewed Selik at a retirement community on May 5, 1989. “I went to his residence without giving him any notice I was coming,” Wilson says. “His

The case was largely quiet until 1987, when Bruce A. Rubenstein and Lawrence E. Ziewacz published Three Bullets Sealed his Lips (Michigan State University Press), a thoroughly researched retelling of the Hooper murder. The book argued its own theory (a version involving Jackson Prison officials, Purple Gang members, and an inmate named Raymond Bernstein whom they claimed pulled the trigger) and posited that Sigler knew the truth of the case all along, but never revealed it for political reasons.

The Lineup

Who’s Who in the Hooper Murder Case*

Frank McKay A millionaire and prominent Michigan Republican who was suspected of ordering the hit on Hooper. The Bentley has his papers. t Donald Leonard A Michigan State police officer who became State Police Commissioner in 1947 and took over the Hooper investigation. The Bentley has his papers.

Kim Sigler Grand jury special prosecutor who worked hard to tie Frank McKay to the Hooper murder. He served as Michigan’s governor from 1947 to 1948.

The Bentley has his papers.

Harry Snyder A witness who tied a maroon car to the murder scene in 1945. The maroon car was later thought to belong to D.C. Pettit, deputy prison warden for the Southern Michigan Prison.

Reopening the Case

Sigler often postured that no matter how long it might take, he’d bring Hooper’s murderer to justice. But as the years dragged on, the case got colder and colder. He lost his reelection bid for governor in 1948 and, in 1953, the plane that he was piloting crashed in Battle Creek.

expression was of complete shock. He nearly had a panic attack; he couldn’t hardly answer any questions I asked.”

A Freedom of Information Act request for Wilson’s case files on the Hooper murder indicate that Wilson tried to convince Selik to come clean about what had happened “due to the fact that he was one of the last remaining persons that had personal knowledge as to what actually occurred,” according to the filed report. But Selik wouldn’t budge. “He stated that he didn’t talk [during the grand jury trial in 1945] and he is not going to talk about it now,” Wilson wrote in his report.

Speaking with the Bentley, Wilson recalls that he left Selik his card and told him to call if he changed his mind. “[Selik] was involved, if not the trigger man,” Wilson believes.

Wilson and other investigators continued the hunt, conducting ballistic tests on possible murder weapons, including two guns from Southern Michigan Prison. However, no conclusions were

The dense information in the book, plus prodding from its authors, prompted Michigan State police to reopen the case and to contact the Bentley Historical Library, which Rubenstein and Ziewacz had used extensively in their research.

Photos n (Top to bottom) The Donald Leonard Collection, box 18, clippings folder; the Donald Leonard Collection, box 18, case files 1949 (2) folder.

(this page, top) A 1947 newspaper clipping declared that Kim Sigler, now Michigan’s governor, was still trying to solve the Hooper murder case. Although four men had been convicted of conspiracy to commit Hooper’s murder, the trigger man had never been brought to justice. (this page, bottom) Selik appealed his conviction of conspiracy to commit the Hooper murder and requested a retrial on a different case, which left him out on $25,000 bail in 1948. He fled, prompting the FBI to issue this wanted card. In 1951, he was found in the Bronx, New York, after a jewel and fur heist.

Sam Abramowitz Purple Gang member turned state’s witness who claimed that he and others had been hired to kill Hooper. He received immunity in exchange for his testimony. His feet were the same size as footprints found at the crime, leading some to believe he was the actual killer.

Photos n Photos (Top to bottom) Courtesy of Frank Passic; the Donald

Leonard Collection, box 18, case files 1949 (2) folder; the Donald Leonard collection, box 33, state police images folder; Detroit Free Press, 1944

ever reached. Selik died in 1996 having never followed up with Wilson, and as time marches on, it’s less and less likely the killer will ever be uncovered.

“In today’s time, it might be possible to get DNA from the crime,” says Wilson, but few physical clues from the case remain. The Michigan Historical Museum has the hat Hooper wore when he was killed, and they displayed it in 2010 during the debut of a novel inspired by the case, To Account for Murder by William C. Whitbeck (Permanent Press). But 70 years on, it’s hard to say what DNA could remain, save possibly Hooper’s.

Hooper can’t tell us who his assailant was, but his grave in Albion’s Riverside Cemetery marks the fact that he died trying to do the right thing.

“With honesty he lived,” his tombstone reads, “for honesty he was taken.” n

t Harry Fleisher A Detroit mobster at the helm of the Purple Gang at the time of Hooper’s murder. He was found guilty (along with his brother Sammy Fleisher, Mike Selik, and Pete Mahoney) of conspiracy to commit murder in 1945.

Mike Selik A Detroit bar operator who was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in 1945. Selik was one of the last living people with personal knowledge of the case when it was reopened in 1989. Detective Sargent Chet Wilson questioned Selik about the case in ’89 and believes Selik was indeed involved, if not the trigger man. * The list of suspects in this case is much longer, and more tangled, than this short article could allow. For a full picture of the investigation and grand jury trial, please see Three Bullets Sealed his Lips by Bruce A. Rubenstein and Lawrence E. Ziewacz.

(this page, top to bottom) Hooper’s gravestone in Albion’s Riverside Cemetery; a mugshot of Harry Fleisher; Donald Leonard on a CB radio in October 1946; Frank McKay (left) and Kim Sigler (right) photographed together in 1944.

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Kennedy inherited her love of the law from both parents.

By Dan Shine and Katie Vloet

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(opposite page) Cornelia Kennedy in 1970, the year she was appointed to the federal bench by President Nixon. (this page) Cornelia Kennedy with her sister, Margaret, and father, Elmer Groefsema, who was a 1917 graduate of U-M’s Law School.

The inspiring, pioneering career of Cornelia Kennedy earned her the title of “First Lady of the Michigan Judiciary.” Now, the papers of the first woman appointed to the federal bench in Michigan, and the fourth woman in the nation to be appointed a federal district court judge, have come to the Bentley, shining a light on a determined woman who knew she had to fight and work harder in her field to earn the same respect as men.

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Ken Hamblin, Detroit Free Press, 1970

t might be the first written opinion of Cornelia Kennedy, the longtime Michigan judge who had a pioneering and distinguished judicial career. Back in May 1936, she was 15-year-old Cornelia Blanche Groefsema writing about the dangers of forest fires to her classmates in the Edison News, her westside Detroit school newspaper.

Kennedy discussed how early Michigan was covered in forests and the “pioneers said to themselves, ‘These forests can never be destroyed.’ But today the forest covers little of the soil of this territory,” she wrote. While on vacation in the Rocky Mountains the previous summer, Kennedy wrote about seeing a forest fire, tree trunks burning brightly at night and smoke filling the air.

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Martin Vloet, Michigan Photography

“All that was left was a mass of smoldering logs,” Kennedy penned. “This can be avoided. We must stop forest fires.”

For someone who was nearly the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and was called the “First Lady of the Michigan Judiciary,” Kennedy’s short item in her school paper as a teenager is hardly the most important or most illuminating paper in the 60-plus boxes of personal and professional items that make up her extensive collection at the Bentley Historical Library. But it does provide insight into the thoughtful girl who would become one of the most respected and groundbreaking judges in Michigan and the country.

A Novelty to Some Born in Detroit, Kennedy and her two sisters were raised by their father, Elmer

Groefsema, after their mother, Mary, died unexpectedly when Kennedy was nine.

Whether it was their mother’s death when they were young or other factors, the three sisters remained close throughout their entire lives. An August 2003 letter in the collection from her sister Margaret, days before Kennedy’s 80th birthday, shows that bond. “Dear Nealie,” her sister typed, “These passing years have made me think how special you are and how much you have done for other people all through your life, especially for me.”

She wrote about how Kennedy would sit in the middle of the family car’s backseat as kids so each of her sisters could sit by a window “and not poke each other and cause a ruckus.”

“You are my dearest friend,” her sister wrote. “I feel so fortunate to be your sister.”

Kennedy inherited her love of the law from both parents; their father, a 1917 University of Michigan Law School graduate, was a distinguished Detroit trial lawyer, and their mother had been taking classes part-time at the law school prior to her death.

Their father thought all three of his daughters should go to college, and firmly believed that they should not necessarily be steered toward careers in teaching or nursing, as was the case with many educated women at the time.

All three excelled in school, as was evidenced by a letter in Kennedy’s Bentley papers from the principal of Redford High School praising the Groefsema girls.

“I know I am speaking for all of the teachers who have known your girls when I say congratulations and unstinted praise to you and the others in your family group who have helped these girls to become the fine characters that they are,” the principal wrote to Elmer Groefsema.

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Kennedy laughed when recounting Senator Orrin Hatch’s reaction to her during confirmation hearings: “By damn, you have a lot of qualifications.”

After attending U-M for her undergraduate degree, Kennedy went to Michigan Law and was one of fewer than 10 women in the class. After graduating in 1947, Kennedy clerked for a judge and then joined her father’s practice in Detroit. It was a time when being a female lawyer was still a novelty to some. She recalled one New York firm telling her that it hired women during the war, but “too bad for me, the war was over,” Kennedy said in a 2012 interview with the Michigan Law School’s Law Quadrangle magazine.

She never argued a case while a clerk, and remembers the early days of her law career as lonely. “Women just didn’t ask men to have lunch with them,” she said.

Her first jury trial—in Detroit’s Common Pleas Court—did draw an interested crowd, Kennedy recalled in a speech when she received the Frank Murphy Award from the Detroit Bar Association in 2011. The first draft of her acceptance speech—later typed on large index cards—was handwritten on nine notepad pages with a pale blue border and a drawing of three potted flowers on the bottom. In her talk, she recalled that first trial and how the attorney representing the other party also was a woman.

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Detroit Free Press, 1970

“It might have been the first jury trial tried by two women,” she told the audience that day. “The trial lasted two days and was well attended by lawyers who wanted to see two women trying a jury case.”

Another example of how women lawyers were still a novelty is Kennedy’s certificate to practice law in Washington, D.C. The clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia typed in the information needed: the person— Cornelia Blanche Groefsema; and the date—13th day of December, 1948. But clerk Harry M. Hull could not alter the standard verbiage on the certificate that the above named was now admitted to practice as an “Attorney at Law at the Bar of this Court,” and that “he” is now “a member of said Bar in good Standing.”

Supreme Effort Her role as one of the few female lawyers and later as one of the few female judges was a constant theme in her numerous speeches and interviews, which can be found in her Bentley archives.

At a Women Law Student Association event at U-M in 1978, Kennedy told those in attendance that to achieve the same success as a man, “women have to be more proficient than men. I am not

speaking of the way things ought to be but the way they are. Well, let’s be more proficient. Let’s encourage our daughters and sisters and mothers to make that extra effort.”

Then, in pen, Kennedy added these words to the end of her remarks: “Only then will women not only be tolerated in the legal profession and the ranks of the judiciary—but welcomed.”

In a 1978 issue of the National Enquirer (yes, that National Enquirer), past the cover story on Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors’ marital woes, a story about Patty Hearst’s romance with her bodyguard, and the mysterious disappearance of police photos of a UFO, is a feature story about Kennedy. In it, she again rallies women to “do a little more and do it better” than a man. “If someone tells me I can’t do something, my reaction is if I feel I can, I WILL do it,” she told the Enquirer.

Kennedy’s judicial career began with her election in 1966 to the Wayne County Circuit Court. In 1970, she was appointed to the federal bench

by President Nixon, and seven years later rose to the rank of Chief Judge of the Eastern District, becoming the first woman to do so. Then, in 1979, President Carter nominated her to

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Kennedy laughed when recounting Senator Orrin Hatch’s reaction to her during confirmation hearings: “By damn, you have a lot of qualifications,” she recalled in the Quadrangle interview.

Those qualifications put her on the short list for the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Reagan narrowed his search to just two people in 1981: Kennedy and an Arizona judge named Sandra Day O’Connor, one of whom would become the first female justice.

O’Connor was chosen. “I was somewhat disappointed, but, you know, it’s a political situation. I was five years older, which was a factor, as I understand it. I quit thinking about it because there’s no purpose in it,” Kennedy told the Quadrangle.

In her papers at the Bentley, there is a copy of the note she sent O’Connor saying simply: “Congratulations and every good wish.”

Also in the collection is O’Connor’s typewritten reply thanking Kennedy.

O’Connor added a handwritten postscript: “I had always thought you would be a most excellent choice. No one was more surprised than I to receive the nomination. You have helped make it

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possible for a woman to be nominated by your excellent record.”

There are also letters from colleagues, friends, and everyday citizens to government officials and President Reagan advocating for Kennedy to be nominated, and then notes of support after O’Connor was chosen.

“Glad to see a woman nominated,” one colleague wrote, “but obviously Reagan got the wrong word on which woman to appoint!”

Kennedy wrote to one supporter, “I, of course, am disappointed but not dispirited.”

Circuit Court Judge Al Engel wrote to her, simply: “Dear Cornelia, You are still supreme to me.”

You Just Do It In 2012, Kennedy hung up her robe after a 46-year judicial career. She would die two years later at age 90. In addition to the personal items in her collection at the Library, many of the cases she presided over are in her archives, along with documents from her long involvement in legal organizations, including her 27-year affiliation with the Judicial Conference of the United States, which frames policy guidelines for the administration of U.S. judicial courts.

(Left to right) Tony Spina, Detroit Free Press, 1971; Ira Rosenberg, Detroit Free Press, 1979

Upon her retirement, a fellow judge wrote to her: “I join others on the court in celebrating your diligence, humor, capacity for hard work and intellect...I will miss your company and guidance more than you can imagine.”

In her typically understated way, Kennedy, with her long list of firsts, summed up her career this way to the Quadrangle: “Well, you just do it. You just go to work and do the job.”

When pressed, she added: “I guess some people have said or written that I influenced them...It’s been a great career.” n Portions of this story first appeared in the Michigan Law Quadrangle in 2012.

They are reprinted here with permission. (opposite page) Cornelia Kennedy is sworn in at the Detroit Federal Building in October 1970, officially becoming Michigan’s first female judge. (above left) Cornelia Kennedy in chambers, October 1971. (right) Kennedy is sworn in as U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals judge by her sister, then Farmington District Judge Margaret Schaeffer, in October 1979.

Kennedy was nominated for the position by President Jimmy Carter.

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As the record was coming together, Atkins submitted his new song “Techno City” for his contribution.

The producers loved the name so much they changed the title of the record to Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit. This was the first time the term “techno” had been used to describe the genre as a whole. The label stuck.

By Robert Havey

Techno music overtook clubs and culture in the 1990s with an electronic, never-before-heard sound. Dan Sicko, a journalist and Michigan native, determinedly documented techno’s beginnings, fighting to show that Detroit—not Europe—had birthed and incubated this musical phenomenon. The Sicko papers at the Bentley spotlight the battle to reclaim Detroit as a cultural contributor and to reveal the real roots of electronic funk.

Photos n (This page) Bryan Mitchell; (opposite) Getty Images/PYMCA

Techno’s Founding Fathers Juan Atkins met fellow aspiring musicians Derrick May and Keven Saunderson in the late 1970s at Belleville High School.

They were among the few black students in the mostly white suburb. The three bonded over their eclectic taste in music, later becoming known as the Belleville Three, and listening to everything from Parliament to Prince to the B-52’s.

The trio was particularly obsessed with the German band Kraftwerk. Musically, they were like nothing that had come before: completely synthesized instrumentation, electronically modulated voices. “Kraftwerk single-handedly moved electronic instrumentation out of the cloistered workspaces of inventors and theoreticians and into the bloodstream of popular music,” said Sicko in Techno Rebels. Kraftwerk was weird. They were otherworldly. They sounded like the future.

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s unlikely as it might sound, Detroit is the birthplace of techno. The electronic dance music genre started not in night clubs in Berlin or London, but in Motor City basement studios and concerts held in abandoned Detroit warehouses. Although many of the original DJs are still performing all over the world, many people still see techno as a European music trend.

Music journalist and Detroit native Dan Sicko (pronounced seek-oh) saw that the roots of Detroit techno were in danger of being forgotten. Sicko, whose papers are at the Bentley Historical Library, received his degree from the University of Detroit in 1990, just as techno was emerging into the mainstream. As a freelance journalist, Sicko wrote articles for Rolling Stone, Wired, and Urb, documenting techno’s origins. He realized that mere oral history wasn’t enough to combat the perception of techno as a European phenomenon, as a “white thing.” It was in 1997 when he started to collect materials for his book, Techno Rebels: Renegades of Electronic Funk (Wayne State University Press, 1999).

The book attempts to both document Detroit’s role in the birth of techno and also to provide a long-form definition of the genre.

Detroit in the 1980s was a perfect incubator for techno’s postindustrial sound. The violence in the 1960s had passed, but the recession, white flight, and the continued collapse of the auto industry left a city half abandoned.

“Detroit is unlike any other city in the transitions it has endured,” said legendary Detroit musician Juan Atkins in a 1994 interview with Sicko in WIRED magazine. “When your surroundings change, you go through change.” After all, what’s more dystopian than gutted buildings decaying in a city’s center? What’s more sci-fi than robots replacing humans on the assembly line?

Detroit dance clubs that catered to teens were popular in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Kids both black and white were able to listen to new wave and euro-disco spun for them by a DJ until they headed home, bleary-eyed, at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Those clubs, oases of culture and activity in the malaise of Detroit, provided a formative experience for many who were regulars, including Dan Sicko and the Belleville Three. It provided a way to hear new music and presented work opportunities for young DJs. Said Derrick May about the parties in Techno Rebels: “... playing for all those kids and organizations—for us it was dress rehearsal.”

Atkins was the first of the Belleville Three to break through with his own music. He formed the group Cybotron in 1980 with his college roommate Rick Davis and released the song “Alleys of your Mind.” Described by a music journalist as “a little ditty about paranoia and thought control,” the single sold 15,000 copies. Legendary radio jock the Electrifying Mojo put songs

by Atkins and his peers on heavy rotation on Detroit music stations. It was the start of a movement.

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kevin saunderson Juan Atkins met fellow aspiring musicians Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson in the late 1970s at Belleville High School. The three bonded over their eclectic taste in music, listening to everything from Parliament to Prince to the B-52s.

Photos n (This page) Doug Coombe; (opposite) Marvin Shaouni

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passing day,” he said in Techno Rebels. “The post-industrial entropy is nearly palpable here, while Hollywood readies sound stages around its perimeter.”

Exporting Techno Word of the new sound coming from Detroit spread across the Atlantic. In 1988, Virgin Records wanted to release a compilation album in the United Kingdom with all of Detroit’s rising stars, including May, Atkins, and Saunderson. As the record was coming together, Atkins submitted his new song “Techno City” for his contribution. The producers loved the name so much they changed the title of the record to Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit. This was the first time the term “techno” had been used to describe the genre as a whole. The label stuck.

Techno! didn’t do well commercially in the UK, failing to recoup the cost of production, but the album did open up a new market for Detroit musicians. Used to playing their music for small Midwest audiences, suddenly DJs were playing in front of huge crowds and being recognized on the street. The UK rave scene provided seemingly endless gigs.

Many Detroit artists found commercial success in the early 1990s, thanks largely to a burgeoning European interest in techno. However, taking Detroit techno out of Detroit did have consequences. Cosmopolitan and capitalist influences pushed techno to be more commercial, more like other forms of electronic music. To make money, artists had to either compromise their sound or move continents (and sometimes both). Atkins said in a 1994 interview that in the United States “it’s very hard for creative thought to escape capitalism.”

It also brought the music out of a largely black community and into a largely white one. What had been a Detroit music creation with roots in funk, jazz, soul, and disco had been lumped in with every electronic music genre as “electronica” and was treated by lazy music journalists as if it had come out of the ether.

It was in part this misconception that made Dan Sicko’s career. While maintaining a day job in marketing for General Motors, Sicko published article after article about Detroit techno. The problem, as he saw it, was that Detroit had been typecast as the dying city, one that is incapable of creating something new and vibrant. Detroit was “a city that in retrospect seems less likely to spawn [the techno movement] each

Remembering the Future Sicko saw that while the Belleville Three and other Detroit artists were still active, oral history wasn’t enough to fight against the fading memory of techno’s origins. With the publication of Techno Rebels, Sicko attempted to make definitive one of the more ephemeral phenomena in music: a true underground movement. “Techno is an expression of complicated, paradoxical, and delicately balanced ideas that can’t always be communicated to the masses.”

In the forward to the book’s 2010 edition, British writer and DJ Bill Brewster wrote that the impact of the book “wrested techno’s history from its European pillagers and handed the history back to its rightful owner: Detroit, the Motor City.”

It’s not an uncommon story. Cultural appropriation, especially of music, is both an old and ongoing issue—from the band the Tokens stealing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” from a South African musician who wrote it in 1939, to Beyoncé and Coldplay appropriating Indian culture in their 2016 video “Hymn for the Weekend.” It’s only with effort that history gives credit to the source of a cultural movement, especially if that source is African American.

Electronic music has since splintered into a thousand pieces, and even the most ardent fan couldn’t possibly name all of the genres Detroit techno has influenced.

In 2011, Dan Sicko died of ocular melanoma, a rare form of eye cancer. He was 42. A year later the materials he collected for his book—interviews, articles, correspondence—were donated to the Bentley Historical Library. Sicko always meant for his work to the start of a discussion about music and history. He said in Techno Rebels: “There’s never been a bigger need to explore Detroit’s innumerable and improbable cultural contributions—if not for the fans and students of music, then for the city itself. While its past is quickly discarded, Detroit needs to remember its future.” n (opening spread) The electronic music festival Movement comes to Detroit every year on Memorial Day weekend, featuring more than 100 artists and attracting thousands of fans. (page 13) Juan Atkins performed under the name Cybotron and released the song “Techno City” in 1984. Here he’s photographed in Detroit in 1990. (opposite page) Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, two members of the original Belleville Three, photographed in Detroit. (this page) Dan Sicko wrote passionately about the roots of techno in Detroit and published his book, Techno Rebels: Renegades of Electronic Funk, in 1999.

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1150 Beal

Researching the Truth One class mines Bentley archives to investigate the history of campus protests and the origins of U-M’s Trotter House

For the Record

By Dan Shine

Elizabeth Carron is the Bentley’s new assistant records manager. We asked her to tell us more about her job—what is records management, anyhow?—and why this new role is especially important for both the Bentley and the University of Michigan.

Q: When you say records management, you don’t mean the kind of records you put on a turntable, right?

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homas Leatherwood III admits to feeling a bit “weird” and a tad “voyeuristic” as he sat at the Bentley Historical Library and picked through a box of correspondence between University of Michigan administration officials, including then president Robben Fleming, as part of his research for the class Introduction to African American Studies.

Leatherwood was studying how University officials were navigating the turbulent black student protests on campus in 1970. He says it was strange reading these private letters as administrators discussed what to do and how U-M could become a more multicultural place.

“I would pick up these letters and was like, ‘Well, I’m not cc’d on this but I’m going to read it anyway,’” he says with a laugh.

Leatherwood and his classmates spent the term using the Bentley archives to research the history and role of Trotter House, the student center for black students opened in 1971 as a result of the protests. With the help of Bentley archivist Cinda Nofziger, the students searched through specific collections looking for a research topic involving Trotter that interested them.

Students ultimately investigated topics such as the request for black-only dorm floors, the events Trotter hosted over the years, black student newspapers, how the greater Ann Arbor community reacted to the black student movement, and more.

Students gave presentations at the end of the term, first to the Bentley staff and later at an event at Trotter House.

Professor Stephen Ward chose Trotter as the focal point for a few reasons, he says. Trotter House was part of the same historical moment at U-M from which African American Studies emerged. The house also has a rich but not widely known history. And a new multicultural center will be built on Central Campus to replace Trotter House, “so this is a particularly opportune time for students to explore the history of Trotter,” he says.

He also came up with the course idea around the Bentley archives and worked with Nofziger to plan the class. Ward says he wanted students to understand the origins of the field of African American studies, including the intellectual roots, political context, and social movements from which it emerged. “I also wanted to expose students to the Bentley and to archives in general, and provide the students with an engaging research experience,” he says.

Leatherwood was thankful that the Bentley opened his eyes to how administrators made decisions, especially those policies he thought were misguided.

“It was a dangerous thing. They didn’t know what multiculturalism was, but they were still writing policy around it,” he says. “The Bentley won’t let people lie.” n

Students in Professor Stephen Ward’s African American Studies class sift through materials at the Bentley this past June.

Photos n Lon Horwedel

A: Hah! No. Records in this context are records from all across the University of Michigan, whether they are in day-to-day use or are in the archives. The University defines a record as any piece of information—paper or digital—that has been created in the course of work, not academics, at the University.

That could mean everything from the minutes of the Regents proceedings to emails to U-M tweets.

Q: Tell us more about what you do in your job.

A: I focus on records as they’re being created all across campus. I work with major campus units, talk about how they are creating and using their records, how they’re storing their records, and more.

Q: How do you guide U-M units about what records are worth keeping?

A: I focus more on when to throw records away, what to throw away, and how to throw them away. I also talk about secure storage options, both on the ground and in the cloud, and privacy. So a good question is: What does the law say you have to keep? How long do you have to keep it for? Those are the kinds of questions I tend to like to ask, and that starts a dialogue. And of course if a unit says, “Hey, I have these records, what do I do?” I can answer that question, too.

Photo n Lon Horwedel

Q: Are there any records you don’t want?

A: Archives can’t accept everything—we just don’t have enough room! One service we provide to the University community is on-site visits, where we perform an appraisal. For example, we love a little description. So if you offer us 2,000 photos without any identifying points, we have to really ask ourselves what the historical value is. What do these photos depict and who is going to use these photos? We also don’t want duplication.

Many times, six or seven units will get the same U-M publication, and they’ll all give it to us. We really want people to think about creating and donating their unique records.

Q: What are some of the coolest records you’ve seen in your job so far?

A: I like the old receipt books. They’re as long as my arm, hugely thick, and when you open them up the writing is fantastically small and neat. It’s interesting to see the handwriting change as new staff is brought in, to read grumbles in the margin about the rising cost of textbooks in 1894.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish in the next year?

A: One of my goals is to make records management exist in minds of community members. I hope people will feel comfortable contacting us. Good records management is achievable, and we are here to help. n

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Re f erences

By Rachel Reed

Camp Collection

Philanthropic Footsteps

Former Congressman David Camp donates papers spanning 24 years in office

How generations of the Bonisteel family have influenced the Bentley Historical Library

By Lara Zielin

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ave Camp, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 2015, has donated the collected materials from his 24 years in office to the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library.

Camp, a Republican, represented Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District beginning in 1993, and previously served one term representing Michigan’s Tenth Congressional District.

The Fourth District includes all of all of Clare, Grand Traverse, Gratiot, Isabella, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Mecosta, Midland, Missaukee, Montcalm, Osceola, and Roscommon counties, and the northern portion of Shiawassee and most of the western portion of Saginaw counties.

Photo n Dave Camp

In 2014, he announced that he would not run for re-election.

He served on the House Committee on Ways and Means from 1993 to 2015, chairing it from 2011 to 2015. While on the committee he worked on tax, inter-

national trade, Medicare, Social Security, and fiscal policy. While serving as Chair, one of the most powerful positions in Congress, he introduced the Tax Reform Act of 2014, widely believed to have been the most comprehensive tax reform proposal since the mid-1980s.

Camp’s collection contains photographs, office records, polling data, surveys, notes, promotional materials, committee materials and more, including a scrapbook of newspaper

clippings, printed photos throughout his political career, and digital holdings including 140 videos from Camp’s YouTube channel.

Camp joins numerous other political leaders in the Bentley’s collection, including 31 Michigan governors as well as 15 U.S. senators and 17 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I am delighted to be part of the Bentley’s collections and to be in such fine historical company,” said Camp.

“I am honored to have served the people of Michigan, who mean so much to me.”

Born in Midland, Michigan, in 1953, Camp attended Albion College in Albion, Michigan, where he graduated in 1975.

He earned a law degree from the University of San Diego in 1978 and practiced law in Midland. He served as special assistant to the Michigan attorney general from 1980 to 1984, then worked on staff for U.S. Representative Bill Schuette from 1984 to 1987.

“Dave Camp’s impressive engagement with many of the most important fiscal issues in America during his term will make his papers an important source for those interested in recent American history,” says Terrence McDonald, Director of the Bentley Historical Library.

This past September, the Bentley honored Camp’s contribution in an event in Midland, Michigan, at the Midland Country Club.

The Bentley has officially received the materials and will begin processing the collection to prepare for public use, which may take up to one year. n Dave Camp on the campaign trail in 1992.

As a representative of Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District, he consistently won reelections with 61 percent of the vote or more.

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oscoe Bonisteel was a man of many talents. Born in 1888, he finished his law degree at U-M in 1912 and began his long career in public service as the city attorney for Ann Arbor. He went on to serve as a delegate at the 1928 Republican National Convention, where he helped elect President Hoover; helped rewrite Michigan’s constitution in the early 1960s; and served as the second president of the State Bar of Michigan. Perhaps his most influential work, however, was as a Regent of the University of Michigan. Bonisteel was the driving force behind the purchase of land to expand the University northward, and his name still graces one of North Campus’s main thoroughfares.

Bonisteel also had a big heart—not only did he serve as director of the Michigan Society for Crippled Children for a time, but he was also instrumental in financing the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He supported Interlochen throughout his life, even paying for many of his children and grandchildren to attend.

Bonisteel believed in the importance of history, too. During his lifetime, he donated a significant cache of historical items to the U-M Clements Library, and was an advocate for the Bentley Historical Library as well. Today, 13 boxes of papers, writings, and notes produced during his life can be found in his Bentley collection.

“Papa was an optimist, and he encouraged others to be the same,” says granddaughter Frances E. Johnson. “He loved his family, the arts, music, and wrote numerous books and articles.

He spent a lot of time volunteering, but he didn’t just volunteer—he helped advance these organizations to new heights.”

Photos n Courtesy of Liz Johnson

Today, multiple generations of the Bonisteel family have followed in Roscoe’s philanthropic footsteps. One of Roscoe’s children, Betty Bonisteel (A.B. ’39), received her undergraduate degree at U-M and then went on to law school at U-M, one of only three women in her 1945 class.

It was in law school that she met her husband, with whom she had six children. Betty continued her father’s work by serving on the board of directors of the Friends of the Bentley Historical Library—a group dedicated to supporting the Bentley’s mission.

Now, Betty’s daughter Liz Johnson (A.B. ’68, M.A. ’72) is continuing the work of her parents and grandparents, along with several of her cousins. Johnson attended U-M during the tumultuous 1960s and saw the protests and sit-ins of the era firsthand. Afterward, she spent 42 years as a school counselor before her retirement. She currently funds a Michigan Hockey scholarship, has given extensively to the Martha Cook Building, and is settling into her new role as manager of the Bonisteel Endowment Fund.

“I am proud of the impact that my family has had on the University and the Bentley, beginning with Roscoe in the early 20th century,” says Johnson. “And I hope that we are able to continue that important work long into the future.” n (left to right) Roscoe Bonisteel congratulates newly minted U-M President Harlan Hatcher in 1951; Roscoe Bonisteel’s daughter, Betty Bonisteel, and current U-M President, Mark Schlissel; members of the Bonisteel family attend a U-M football game. Clockwise from bottom left they are Betty Bonisteel, Sidney Beckwith, Liz Johnson, Crystina Beckwith Brooks, Katie Johnson, and James Michael Brooks.

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Cat h ol e piste mi ad

Building Blocks When brothers Irving and Allen Pond built the League and the Union, they constructed gender roles right alongside the walls, floors, and windows.

By Rachel Reed

3 Female students and the wives of faculty members had maintained their own organization, the Women’s League, since 1890. The group helped new students find roommates, connect with mentors, and they’d begun fundraising for a women’s building almost immediately after they formed.

A 1924 flyer outlines the campaign for a women’s building as “The House that Jill would Build.”

4 The growing body of female students and alumnae rejoiced when the Michigan League finally opened in 1929.

It was a building designed for women, but with men also in mind. The League, wrote Irving Pond, would provide “the maximum of accommodations for men,” because “…men will gather in clubs and enjoy themselves without the presence of women, while women…find their enjoyment greatly enhanced by the presence of men or boys.”

1 In 1919, the Michigan Union opened its doors. Male students had petitioned for the Union for several years, insisting on a space to “promote University spirit, and to increase social intercourse and acquaintance with each other’s work” for “Michigan men everywhere.” The building contained a bowling alley, barbershop, eatery, reading rooms, and later a pool, which women could use—but only at scheduled times.

Th e Un i o n

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ost of us know that the Michigan Union was built as a men’s club—in fact, women weren’t even allowed through the front door until 1956—and that the Michigan League came 10 years later as a sister club for women. But few are aware of just how deliberately gender differences were built into the physical spaces of the Union and the League, both of which were designed by brothers Irving and Allen Pond. The men were architects, graduates of U-M, and, in a strange coincidence, the Union was built on the site of their boyhood home.

In celebration of the University’s Bicentennial, a new exhibition by the Bentley Historical Library in January 2017, in collaboration with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, will explore how the design, fundraising, and construction of these legendary campus buildings not only reflected the era’s ideas about gender roles but also sometimes perpetuated them.

Photos n (Top to bottom) BL004963, HS15482, HS15478, HS15175

2 The Union’s billiards room, drawn into the initial architectural plans by Pond and Pond, initially had 25 tables and played an important social role for young men on campus. In his request for the funds to build the Union, Henry Moore Bates implored alumni to think about how men, lacking a proper place to gather, were “forced to take to the streets or to worse places” to enjoy themselves. The billiards room was the building’s last holdout in the push for gender integration—opening up to women in 1968.

The League

6 The interior of the League also emphasized female virtuosity. Images of ideal women—Joan of Arc, for example—or the notion of Young American Womanhood were presented in murals painted in the League’s Hussey Room

by J.E. McBurney.

7 In addition to plenty of “rest rooms” containing cubicles with couches, which Irving Pond thought especially important for women, the League also contained a beauty shop, a kitchenette service “for the girls,” a tea room, and a chapel.

Photos n (Clockwise from middle) HS3647, HS15163, HS15477, HS7392, HS5860, HS6046, HS15146, HS15188

5 The buildings’ exterior décor emphasized perceived gender differences. The Pond brothers chose statues representing an athlete (facing south, toward Ferry Field, later Michigan Stadium) and a scholar to adorn the entrance of the Union, while they placed female figures representing virtues such as “character” and “friendship” at the front of the League.

8 The women who banded together to raise money for the League from alumnae across the world were immensely proud of their new building. As one fundraising brochure put it, “Because...the women of Michigan must constantly be guests of the men today, they are handicapped in carrying their proper share of responsisibility for community ideals. It is the entertainer and not the entertained who controls the situation.” The League helped to give Michigan woman that control.

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“That Stupid Display” Heads almost rolled when students started performing the wave in Michigan Stadium in the early 1980s. An archived memo at the Bentley shows the fury of then Athletic Director Don Canham’s reaction.

By Greg Kinney

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hen “the wave” first rolled through Michigan Stadium early in the fall of 1983, Athletic Director Don Canham was not pleased. Michigan’s cheerleaders brought the wave to Michigan Stadium after witnessing Washington Husky fans perform it in the season opener in Seattle. Canham called assistant gymnastics coach and cheerleader advisor Bob Darden to his office and made it clear he never wanted to see it at Michigan Stadium again and ordered him to “straighten out those cheerleaders.” Fearing U-M could be penalized for the distraction, Bo Schembechler threatened to play in an empty stadium if it occurred again.

So when the wave reappeared at the 1983 homecoming game in October, Canham was furious. A scathing memo to Darden, pom-pom squad advisor Pam St. John, and others warns, in no uncertain terms, that the wave needs to stop (see sidebar).

Rules for the Wave at Michigan Stadium The Ups and Downs of How it Works

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he wave may only be initiated from the student section of the Big House using the following criteria: The game must be well into the third quarter.

Michigan must have a two-score lead.

He tells them “it cost us a penalty,” and threatens that if he sees the wave one more time, he’ll “replace all of you.”

Athletic Director Don Canham (right) in Michigan Stadium with Bo Schembechler in 1980.

But the fans, especially the student section, had adopted the wave as their own. The fact that Canham and Schembechler objected to it only added to its attraction for the students. The wave soon became a regular feature of Michigan football Saturdays. In 1984, it was even incorporated into a Marching Band halftime show. Over the years, a set of rules evolved governing when and how the wave and its variants would occur that addressed some of Canham’s objections (see sidebar).

Ironically, it was Canham’s marketing genius and Bo Schembechler’s winning teams that filled Michigan Stadium every game and made the wave possible. In a half-full stadium, the wave would have made barely a ripple. n

Photo n BLOO6725/Per Kjeldsen

Michigan should be on defense, although this might not be strictly adhered to in a blowout.

The total wave sequence lasts six circuits around the Big House, as follows: The original wave (2 circuits) The fast wave (1 circuit) The slow wave (1 circuit) The reflected wave (1 circuit) The split wave (1 circuit)

by Geoff Zmyslowski

The original wave is performed at a moderate pace and travels counter-clockwise around the stadium twice.

After this is completed, the student section forces the wave through at a much faster pace.

When the wave reaches the student section again, it immediately slows to around a third of its original pace and stays that way for another lap.

After reaching the student section again, it stops and is reflected back in a clockwise direction at the original pace.

When the clockwise wave returns to the student section, they maintain it while simultaneously starting another wave in a counter-clockwise direction. When done correctly, the two waves meet and pass through each other in the opposite corner of the stadium.

Geoff Zmyslowski runs the Hoover Street Rag blog. These rules were originally posted in 2006 and are reprinted here with permission.

friday night fights Missiles from Canham’s Missive “That stupid display might have been a lot of fun for a lot of people, but it cost us a penalty and almost lost the football game for us. I have told you and others a million times that the cheerleaders and pom pom girls are not the feature of the day; the feature of the day is the football game and we will continue it that way at Michigan...I tried to impress on you that we are not some small crossroad college with mascots and gimmick cheers. If you think I am upset, you are right.” — Don Canham, October 24, 1983

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The Bearded Barnstormers of Benton Harbor

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

It was a big deal when the long-haired boys of the House of David baseball team came to town

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professional game was special itself in the early 1900s, but a visiting team comprising men from a mysterious Michigan religious colony? That was a must-see event.

Besides their trademark hair and beards, the team was known for its warm-up game called “Pepper,” which involved fancy fielding tricks and routines. They were the Harlem Globetrotters of semi-pro baseball.

Benjamin Purnell founded the Israelite House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903. His stated mission was to unite the lost tribes of Israel to prepare for the coming apocalypse, but on the way he created one of the most popular and unusual attractions in the Midwest. Purnell turned the acres of colony property into a multi-million-dollar industry featuring an amusement park, an ice cream stand, a mini railway, and even a vegetarian restaurant. The colony sold lumber, grain, fruits, and vegetables, but its most famous export was its baseball team.

The team members played all over the country, from their first game in 1910 until their last in 1955. In the 42 years they

By Robert Havey

were active, they played against and with some of the most famous names in baseball. Satchel Paige made frequent appearances in their games. World Series champion Grover Cleveland Alexander pitched for the team during the twilight of his career.

Even Babe Ruth was offered a contract (it led to a photo of Ruth wearing a fake House-of-David-style beard). Ruth never did play for the team, possibly because his drinking may have clashed with the team’s upstanding image.

The House of David baseball team remained popular, even as their colony faded. Purnell died in 1930, and his empire collapsed after years of infighting. The rise and fall of the colony is documented in the D.C. Allen House of David collection at the Bentley. Allen was a Three Oaks, Michigan, book dealer and an avid collector of House of David ephemera.

The collection includes photographs, colony publications, scrapbooks, recordings of sermons, and—yes—more photos of the uncanny baseball team.

(op to bottom) A House of David promotional poster printed circa 1920 makes sure to showcase the players’ long hair and beards; a team photo circa 1918; and the team bus is followed by vehicles carrying a portable light system, allowing the team to play night games, a rare sight in 1936.

Robert Havey Communications Specialist Hammond Design Art Direction/Design Copyright ©2016 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 Regents of the University of Michigan Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor Laurence B. Deitch, Bloomfield Hills Shauna Ryder Diggs, Grosse Pointe Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Andrea Fischer, Newman, Ann Arbor Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park 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.

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Thousands packed Detroit’s Fillmore Theater in 2014 for a techno concert—think music heavy on synthesizers and bass beats—but likely few in attendance understood that the roots of the music movement were in the Motor City itself. Learn more about the birth of techno in Detroit and the Bentley’s role in preserving it on page 12.

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