A Look Back: Celebrating Figures of Our Past
- News
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- Research Preview: Dignity of Fragile Essential Work in a Pandemic
- Earl Lewis Awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden
- Earl Lewis Speaks on Reparations
- Young Speaks About Latest Book on Podcast
- Research
- Events
- News Features
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- Ways to Decolonize Thanksgiving
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- A Look Back : Black News and Media Outlets
- A Look Back : Ann Arbor's First Pride Celebrations
- A Look Back: Celebrating AAPI History and Heritage in Michigan
- A Look Back : Discrimination against Asian American, Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities
- A Look Back | Desegregating Sports in America
- A Look Back: The History of MLK Day
- A Look Back: The Thirteenth Amendment
- A Look Back: Telework and the Digital Divide
- A Look Back: 401 Years After the First Slave Ship’s Arrival in America
- A Look Back: Civil Rights Act of 1964
- A Look Back: Pride and Intersectionality
- A Look Back | Black History Month
- A Look Back: The First Slave Ship in the U.S.
- A Look Back: Celebrating Figures of Our Past
- A Look Back: The Stonewall Uprising of 1969
- A Look Back | Juneteenth
- Earl Lewis Featured in PBS Series, Making Black America: Through the Grapevine
- Invisible Labor: Faculty’s Uncompensated Efforts to promote DEI
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- Staff Features
- In the Face of Resistance: Advancing Equity in Higher Education
- Greening the Road Ahead: Navigating Challenges for Just Transitions to Electric Vehicles
- In the Wake of Affirmative Action
- Center for Social Solutions Co-Produces 'The Cost of Inheritance'
- Press Release: Earl Lewis, University of Michigan, Receives the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award from the Organization of American Historians
- Higher Admissions: The Rise, Decline, and Return of Standardized Testing
- Events
“Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men,” The Times boldly states at the top of its “Overlooked” obituary page. “Now, we’re adding the stories of other remarkable people.” To pay tribute to those who were wrongly neglected, The New York Times devotes a page to individuals who played a role in mobilizing society toward a better future. Below, we highlight a few of these figures who are particularly connected to the Center’s initiatives.
The Power of Diversity
Article by Carson Vaughan
Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband Roy refused to submit to discrimination toward Alaskan Natives. So they didn’t. After years of effort and Elizabeth’s powerful court testimony, the two were able to get the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act passed—the very first American antidiscrimination act.
Article by Joseph B. Treaster
French artist Lucy Schwob, who changed her name to the more ambiguous Claude Cahun, did not wish to be confined to the norms of one gender. Largely unnoticed during her time, Cahun is now appreciated as an early crusader in defying gender and sexuality norms and questioning conventional understandings of identity.
Slavery and Its Aftermath
Article by Morgan Jerkins
Poet and creator of Detroit’s Broadside Press publishing House, Dudley Randall helped propel the Black Arts Movement—“a flowering of African-American literature, theater, music and other arts.” His work not only offered pathways for black artists of his time, but his influence has even touched some of today’s great writers.
Article by Lance Booth
At just 16 years old, then high school student Barbara Johns courageously organized a massive student protest to fight for better facilities for her black student body. And her risky work paid off, as she eventually became one of the mobilizers of Brown v. Board of Education—the case in which racial segregation in schools was ruled unconstitutional.
The Future of Work
Article by Nellie Bowles
With the breakthrough idea to teach computers human language—as opposed to communicating with them through code—Karen Sparck Jones laid the groundwork for search engines like Google that many couldn’t live without today.
Article by Alan Cowell
Mathematician and World War II Allied codebreaker, Alan Turing is credited with being one of the first to introduce early visions of artificial intelligence, a tool that now impacts our everyday lives. Tragically, his death was likely the result of inexcusable treatment toward him because of then attitudes toward homosexuality.