Forever in the path : the Black experience at Michigan State University
Publication Information
East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, [2025]
Physical Description
xxxii, 650 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm
Summary
"Founded in 1855 as the State Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, Michigan State University-"America's first agricultural college"-has a fascinating past, a history shaped by vacillating local and national contexts as well as by people from different walks of life. The first Black students arrived on campus during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the first full-time Black faculty member was hired in the late 1940s. Before and after the modern Civil Rights Movement, African Americans from various backgrounds were transformed by MSU while also profoundly contributing in vital ways to the institution's growth and evolving identity. Forever in the Path offers a sweeping overview of the Black experience at Michigan State University from the 1890s through the late twentieth century. With explorations of countless personalities, important events, and key turning points, this book is a blend of intellectual history, social history, educational history, institutional history, and the African American biographical tradition. Dagbovie depicts and imagines how his numerous subjects' upbringings and experiences at the college and later university informed their futures, and how they benefitted from and contributed to MSU's vision, mission, and transformative role in the history of higher education"--
Contents
- Recognizably absent
- Booker T. Washington and M.a.C.
- Black culture imagined in collegeville
- Praise song for Tuskegee
- Historic commencement ceremony
- Class of 1900 honorable mention
- Alumnus extraordinaire
- Of the highest qualities of character
- Spartan superhero
- From Norfolk to East Lansing
- Merit counts
- Of football fame
- Between the wars pathfinders
- It is more blessed to give than receive
- Chief
- Gridiron and dairy farm
- In Myrtle's footsteps
- Demanding equal opportunity, serving others
- Of all places, in our own state school
- Making of a civil rights icon
- Forgotten firsts from the forties
- Virtually segregated, strength in (small) numbers
- Belated welcome
- Early Black student movement
- Fair housing is a must
- Apex of the struggle
- Radical departures
- Black power arrives in East Lansing
- McKissick's and King's progeny
- Take-over
- Golden age of organizing
- I heard it through the grapevine
- Rise and fall
- Black, and green & white
- Trailblazing educators
- Anything but silent generationers
- Excellence in mathematics, history and counseling
- A century of combined service
- Shattering the glass ceiling
- A remarkable presidency
- 1989 the number.