The UDM Libraries and Instructional Design Studio is pleased to announce the addition of the digitized version of “Light Up the Land” to our Digital Archives. The collection includes the digitized musical (offered in two parts), along with the production program and a biography of Father Lord....
So, even though educating the black population was not illegal in the northern states during this period, it wasn’t encouraged or supported. Many schools dedicated to educating black children folded under the pressures of lack of funding and lack of support from the white population. Education in this section of the population at one point became a communal endeavor: literate parents taught their children, friends taught friends, groups formed to help each other learn. In the South where educating slaves was not allowed, this type of communal education (mostly centering on learning to read the Bible) was unstoppable....
It seems an unlikely pairing, but one theory in the history of slavery assures us that Harriet Beecher Stowe was influenced to write her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin after reading the autobiography of Josiah Henson, former slave and Black Abolitionist. Stowe’s character of Uncle Tom even looks a bit like the photograph of Henson available on various web sites devoted to African American history. And according to one site, Henson’s supporters even encouraged this connection after the book’s popularity to...
Have you ever wondered about the history of UDM’s yearly Convocation? Each year university faculty and employees gather together to kick off the new academic year. Did you know that the Digital Archives offers a way to trace the history of this annual event through our Convocation Collection? And not just the history of these important assemblies at UDM, but also those held when we were known as the University of Detroit and Mercy College....
Mercy College, once located at 8200 West Outer Drive, opened its doors to the first class of eager students on September 8, 1941. October of that year marked the first issue of Outer Echoes, the school newspaper. Frequent visitors to our digital archives know by now that our Mercy College Student Newspapers collection contains a wealth of history within its issues from October, 1941 through April, 1989. Our Tower Yearbook collection fills in the history of the school after this...
History has a way of collapsing time. It moves along a social timeline from major event to major event and the small steps that occurred to the human beings involved in the day to day struggle between those events is often overlooked. We see for example the settling of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 (and the African slaves who were included in this), the Civil War in 1861, and the emancipation of slaves in 1863. We’re told that slavery had a long history of cruelty and abuse, and we are hesitant to spend too much time exploring the detailed lives of those who survived this....
Ah! It’s so nice to find the days warming and the sun shining with all its might! After spending as much time as possible outside in the fresh spring air, you might find yourself musing over something to do. “I spend too much time in social media,” you might say to yourself. “I need to just soak up the colors of this new season, but how can I do this and still benefit from the social world?”
Well, one answer may be to spend some time with the art from the Maurice Greenia, Jr. archive. ...
When someone mentions the 1960s the first thing that often comes to mind for a lot of people these days is a vision of colorfully dressed hippies dancing in a park playing tambourines and singing songs of peace. Some people think of the Vietnam War and the protests that went along with it; some think of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the dark hours of that dramatic event. The troubled and troubling decade of the 1960s, and the string of events that ended once and for all the innocent years following World War II, seems to have been started by one major occurrence that a lot of people tend to overlook when they consider this time....
The very first Tamarack (volume 1, number 1) was published in April 1897. That spring must surely have begun in a similar fashion to the way it begins today: hopeful, bursting with flowers, sunshine, and the unspoken promise of a fresh start. The students who haunted the hallowed halls of Detroit College back then must have welcomed the end of winter with as much enthusiasm as today’s students. Spring meant a release from negotiating the icy streets, the snowy treks to campus, the unyielding freezing temperatures, and the general mess of winter. Back then without the advantages of current cold temperature attire, it must have taken a lot of determination just to get to class. And how wonderful it must have been to at last know the sun would grace those final days of classes before the end of the semester....
Here’s a question: What value is there in looking through digitized versions of past Commencement booklets? Good question! Answers to this range from the obvious historical research benefit to the idea of satisfying curiosity. Suppose, for example, that you are curious about the history of Commencement at the university. When did this ceremony begin for the University of Detroit (or for Detroit College)? Did all schools participate? Were the various schools even established at U of D when Commencement first...
