Dear Alumni and Friends,

Black History Month is a time to recognize and emphasize that the University of Michigan’s history is marked by significant achievements, milestones and, in some cases, staggering failures.

In 1870, for example, Gabriel Franklin Hargo became the university’s first Black graduate and only the second Black man in the nation to receive a law degree. But just seven years prior, Alpheus W. Tucker, a Black medical student jeered by his white classmates during a lecture, was told by faculty that “for the peace and harmony of the institution,” he should leave. (Read more about Tucker in The Quarto No. 46, see page 6).

A century later, and nine months before his historic August 1963 March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent a day on the Ann Arbor campus, inspiring audiences at Hill Auditorium and hosting a discussion on civil disobedience with a small group at the Michigan Union. Yet, it would be another seven years before U-M granted tenure to a Black professor and 19 years before appointing our first Black deans.

What can these examples from our history teach us? For me, it’s that progress isn’t linear, and it rarely happens quickly enough. We must continually recommit ourselves to building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive institution, much in the same way we should strive for the same in our communities and the wider world. We can, and must, learn from our history.

Today, the University of Michigan is working with communities across our state, including many majority-Black communities. In Benton Harbor, U-M researchers are collaborating with city stakeholders on projects focused on transit, mobility, and water, ranging from assessing the impact of improved public transportation on employment to upgrading water supply management systems.

UM-Flint recently used a $300,000 U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration grant to support economic development strategies in response to the pandemic. The money helped the campus’s EDA University Center for Community & Economic Development to jumpstart in-demand services, including implementing community workforce development programs for business owners, entrepreneurs and nonprofits in Genesee County.

And in the city of Detroit, where 78 percent of residents are Black, U-M has ramped up its collaborations during the pandemic, including outreach to residents on issues ranging from unemployment to the COVID-19 vaccine. Partnering with four Detroit community-based organizations, one university-led project aims to improve home energy efficiency and lower monthly utility bills for residents in two predominately Black neighborhoods. The Michigan Institute for Data Science also partnered with Microsoft to expand digital equality across the city by improving broadband internet access and affordability in underserved areas. As of 2021, more than a third of households in Detroit lacked access to broadband.

James Baldwin once said, “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” On our campuses and in communities across the state, working in partnership, we are writing the next chapters in the university’s history.

There are two quick additional items of note:

Go Blue!