Did you know? This year marks the 20th anniversary of U-M softball’s first national championship! ⭐

U-M and UCLA battled it out with a tied score until the 10th inning, when Samantha Findlay hit a home run, winning the national championship for Michigan!

It was an exciting victory, but Findlay was more excited to celebrate her teammates, telling the Michigan Daily: “I would take this team over any individual awards, because this team has meant the world to me.” Since then, softball, and women’s athletics at large, have only grown.

Following the winning tradition of their teammates before them, U-M softball alumni Sierra Romero, playing with the Volts (@ausl_volts), and Lauren Derkowski, playing with the Talons (@ausl_talons), will both compete professionally in Athletes Unlimited Softball League’s inaugural season this year!

Good luck to Sierra Romero and Lauren Derkowski, and Go Blue! 💙

These national championship photos, and others like them, are being added to the U-M Athletic Department collection by our amazing student fellows through the Peikert Fellowship, made possible by Fran and Michael Peikert.

📸: Photos by Jackson Laizure & Amir Gamzu, Athletic Department collection

#UMich #Softball #GoBlue #ProBlue #AUSL #SportsHistory #NationalChampionship ...

On this day exactly 100 years ago, the U-M Lawyers Club was officially dedicated!

The Lawyers Club was the very first part of the Law Quad to be completed. Several law deans from across the U.S. gave speeches, and a letter from William W. Cook, who funded the Law Quad, was read aloud for the occasion.

(Cook himself refused to visit in person. He preferred to picture the Law Quad in his own imagination, describing the space as a “dream.”)

With gothic architectural features like arched windows of cathedral glass, and stone carvings, the Lawyers Club was created as a beautiful space for students, the first group of whom had already started living there in 1924!

Today, the Lawyers Club is still home to JD and LLM students of U-M’s Law School during the academic year, and the Law Quad remains a beloved space on U-M’s Ann Arbor campus!

You can learn more about the Law Quad’s early history with the Law School records in the archives, and with books like “Giving it All Away: The Story of William W. Cook & His Michigan Law Quadrangle” by Law Librarian Emerita Margaret Leary.

📸: Images sourced from the U-M Photo Vertical File, the book “Addresses Delivered at the Dedication of the Lawyers Club,” and the Michigan Daily Digital Archives

#UMich #OTD #100YearsAgo #LawQuad #LawyersClub #LawSchool #MichiganHistory ...

Throwback to June of 1959, when singer Marian Anderson made U-M history not once, but twice, as both the first African American and the first woman to be U-M’s main commencement speaker!

A Civil Rights activist, Marian Anderson famously pushed back against segregation by performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, when she was denied the chance to sing in Constitution Hall. She went on to win the United Nations Peace Prize, a Congressional Gold Medal, and many other awards for her lifetime of work as a singer and barrier breaker!

She wished U-M graduates "a full, rich life of wonderful service." According to the Michigan Alumnus at the time, her commencement speech at U-M was described as "tremendously sincere, and very well done."

After her speech, she was granted an honorary doctorate in music from U-M!

Click through to see some newspaper clippings about her commencement speech, and see our Commencement Addresses web page for more details.

📸: News & Information Photographs, Michigan Daily Archives

#TBT #UMich #MarianAnderson #MichiganHistory #DidYouKnow #Throwback ...

In 1971, pioneering activist Jim Toy helped found U-M’s Spectrum Center to support LGBTQ+ students!

“Growing up in an Ohio village in the 1930s and 1940s, I felt totally alone,” Toy said of his childhood. Then, he discovered the LGTBQ+ community in Detroit, and it changed his life, sparking a lifetime of work to create LGBTQ+ communities for others who needed support.

Toy spoke out against discrimination, educated other people about LGBTQ+ rights and issues, and created groups and spaces to help support LGBTQ+ people in Michigan, including the Spectrum Center for students at U-M, which he co-founded with Cynthia Gair.

Today, the Spectrum Center (one of the earliest student support centers of its kind) uses education, research, and community building to help students thrive at U-M!

Click through to learn more about Jim Toy’s lifetime of advocacy!

You can also learn more about Jim Toy’s work through his papers, preserved at the Bentley Historical Library, which include notes about outreach, newspaper clippings, poetry, posters, and more.

#JimToy #UMich #LGBTHistory #SpectrumCenter #PrideMonth ...