University of Michigan campus view lithograph, ca. 1865-74 (University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, HS12871)
Jane Lemish and Julia Lathrop staff Michigan Historical Collections, 1948 (Bentley Historical Library records. HS5555)
The History of U-M site is designed to facilitate the discovery and exploration of the university's past by collecting historical content and resources for engagement, browsing, and searching.
The History of U-M website is a collaboration between the Bentley Historical Library, the Inclusive History Project (IHP), and the Public Engagement Team (PET) in the Department of History on the Ann Arbor campus. The work it collects and the website itself reflect an institution-wide commitment to promoting, sharing, and examining U-M’s full history.
The site continues to grow as more resources on U-M’s history are produced across the university’s campuses.
Black Action Movement (BAM) students picketing in front of Hill Auditorium, March 1970 (Safety Dept. (U-M) photograph collection, HS9774)
The History of U-M website was first created to continue the momentum of the university’s 2017 bicentennial programming.
Launched in 2018 under the direction of Gary Krenz, the Bentley Historical Library’s director of post-bicentennial planning, the site initially served as a home for the many resources created to catalog and celebrate the university’s first 200 years of history. It also highlighted the new stories on U-M’s history featured in the Heritage Project, the Bentley’s Collections magazine, LSA Magazine, Michigan Alum magazine, and Michigan Today. History of U-M additionally served as a platform for new work on U-M’s history produced by the Bentley Historical Library and other partners, and was updated with resources as they became available.
Northwest corner of the Diag, 1887 (University of Michigan Photographs Vertical File, BL001877)
The Department of History on the Ann Arbor campus has also pursued a number of public-facing initiatives to share research conducted by faculty and students with audiences beyond the university, and many of those projects specifically focused on the history of U-M.
Through HistoryLabs, Michigan in the World, and other programs, U-M History produces a number of exhibits and other resources that expand knowledge and understanding of the university’s history, and collects those resources on the U-M History Showcase, a website managed by the department.
UM-Flint campus
In 2022, the announcement of the Inclusive History Project (IHP), a multiyear presidential initiative to document and share a more comprehensive history of the university, renewed and energized the university's commitment to expanding knowledge of U-M's history.
Ongoing projects led and funded by the IHP on the Flint, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor campuses and at Michigan Medicine seek to deepen research on the history of inclusion and exclusion at the university and to engage people across and beyond U-M’s campuses to better understand those histories and their impact on the present.
While work by the Bentley Historical Library, the Department of History at Ann Arbor, the IHP, and many other partners to document and share the history of U-M continues, existing efforts to make sense of that history should be both widely known and credited. Future work should build on this existing knowledge and might also move in new and underexplored directions.
UM-Dearborn campus
In summer 2024, the IHP partnered with Ann Arbor’s Department of History and the Bentley Historical Library to conduct additional research to identify as many existing resources on U-M’s history as possible, in a variety of forms and media.
With work led by Gregory Parker, Henry Cowles, and Christopher DeCou and input from people across our campuses, the team sought to create a comprehensive list of projects and publications on the history of U-M to augment the resources already collected on the History of U-M site. They also aimed to redesign the History of U-M site to make those resources better able to be searched and browsed, so that anyone interested in learning more about U-M’s past would have a collection of resources just some keywords and a few clicks away.
UM-Ann Arbor campus
The new History of U-M site was launched in Summer 2025 and continues to develop.
In finding ways to amplify existing efforts and share their findings and insights with new audiences, the History of U-M site and the team behind it aim to make sure that the knowledge contained in these resources and the lessons they offer about U-M’s past are broadly known—and that this work continues across our campuses.
Work on the History of U-M site is ongoing, with new projects and publications added to the site as they become available.
The partners below created the site, and the Bentley Historical Library and the Inclusive History Project continue to update and maintain it with the collaboration and input of people across the university.
