#OTD in 1919, Michigan officially ratified the 19th Amendment for women`s right to vote. It was the third state in the entire country to do so!

Women in Michigan had been campaigning for voting rights for many years, giving speeches, raising visibility with parades like this one, and more.

This moment was a hard-won victory, and the 19th Amendment would go on to be officially added to the United States Constitution in 1920.

However, the suffrage movement itself was not equal; African Americans, Native Americans, and many other groups were often excluded, and faced voting restrictions white women didn`t face. It took many years for all women to have the right to vote in the United States.

Anyone is welcome to check out collections like the Lucia Grimes papers and the Michigan Suffragist periodical in our reading room to learn more about the history of suffrage in Michigan!

#MichiganHistory #OnThisDay #SuffrageMovement #VotesForWomen #DidYouKnow #1910s ...

Meet research fellow Efrîn Özyetis! As an artist and academic with a PhD in Architecture, Efrîn is fascinated by silences in the archives.

She’s particularly interested in the way things that don`t get written, and don`t get preserved, can reveal information. For example, while exploring the collection of architect Knud Lönberg-Holm at the Bentley, she discovered that the architect`s wife, Ethel, may have been an uncredited partner in his modernist work.

Because women were often historically expected to contribute to their husbands` careers uncredited, it`s unclear how much of Lönberg-Holm`s work was actually done by Ethel, making her a kind of "ghost" in the archives.

Themes of invisible architecture and immigration deeply interest Efrîn, who experienced the complexities of immigration firsthand when moving to France. She enjoys digging into the historical papers of architects like Knud Lönberg-Holm, who moved to the United States in the 1920s and spent several years living in Michigan as a Danish American.

Efrîn’s research at the Bentley Historical Library expands on her dissertation, and focuses on invisible `architects,` like Knud and Ethel Lönberg-Holm, whose names are not well known but whose influence was widely felt in modernist architecture.

In addition to her research, Efrîn was recently an Artist in Residence at Cité internationale des arts in Paris, France. Click through to see a multimedia art installation she created, interrogating the history of displacement in an art gallery in Paris.

She plans to use her research in the archives at the Bentley to write an article about the influence of invisible architects on architectural thought!

#Archives #Architecture #Modernist #MichiganHistory #ResearchFellow ...

Have you ever wanted to see behind-the-scenes in U-M`s archives? 👀

Join us for our next tour of the stacks to get an insider`s view of the amazing historical materials here at the Bentley Historical Library, on June 10, 2026 at 5:30 PM!

The Bentley is home to thousands of collections featuring history from both U-M and the state of Michigan. Our shelves hold early yearbooks, old maps of Ann Arbor, family papers, historical photos of Michigan Stadium, and so much more.

Our monthly behind-the-scenes tours are free, and open to all. We’d love to see you there!

Details and registration for our June tour can be found at this URL: https://myumi.ch/39jME

The two students you can see here come from an image in the Richard Hill Jr. Photo Collection in the archives, a wonderful resource that includes historical photos of early African American students living in Ann Arbor.

Anyone can request this collection for viewing in our reading room!

#AnnArbor #UMich #BehindTheScenes #Tour #Archives #AnnArborEvents ...