Fall 2023

Belford Lawson’s work as a lawyer and activist changed the course of...

In 1961, the Kennedy Administration sent the U-M Symphony Band to the Soviet Union in hopes of thawing relations between the two countries through the common language of music.

One of U-M’s first female students defied gender norms and wrote a book about her experiences on campus.

Patrick Charles’s new book, Vote Gun, explores the history of gun rights legislation in the United States and uses several Bentley collections.

She was hailed as a World War II hero, but the primary sources surrounding Elsie MacGill reveal that her life and legacy were more complex than the media would acknowledge.

Reflections from Bentley Director Alexis Antracoli on the core ways in which the Bentley will continue to draw on its strengths and chart new paths in the future.

Forty-nine years before women were granted the right to vote in the United States, Nannette Gardner would cast her ballot in Detroit, giving the suffrage movement a notable victory.

In 1945, Sarah Elizabeth Ray was denied passage on a steamboat on the Detroit River because she was Black. She fought the injustice, and today her trailblazing civil rights role is being preserved — including through a new collection.

A student’s senior film project revisited the long-buried history of McCarthyism at U-M. More than 70 years later, the fight for academic freedom lives on through the legacy of Chandler Davis.