This case study examines the efforts of the Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan State University, hereafter MAC) to promote agricultural science and agricultural education. It promoted both, simultaneously, by collaborating with farmers' organizations to conduct agricultural education (extension) through, most notably, institutes, bulletins,…

Dr. Jessie Wallace Hughan was a trailblazing New York City public school educator and pacifist. Hughan was a socialist, and she was among numerous teachers who faced investigations for anti-patriotic activities at the turn of the 20th-century, when teachers across the country faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges if they were suspected of…

Historical writings about the Morrill Land-Grant Acts are not free from promoting unbiased, dominant ideas about the laws' reach and intentions. The Morrill Acts were major legislation, but they did not signify the entitlement of every citizen; their successes for Black students, communities, and colleges were meager. This study makes common cause…

The combination of two technological tools, Microsoft Excel and ArcGIS, has proved powerful in organizing, categorizing, and expressing data visually in meaningful ways. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has found its way into historical research due to its interdisciplinary nature and usefulness. The goal of this paper is not to…

In 1966, as the old county courthouse in Delaware County moved to a new building, there was no easy way to relocate the years of old documents and artifacts that had been collecting dust in the disorganized basement and attic since 1880. The decision was made. Thousands of documents, ledgers, and manuscripts from the founding of the county in 1827…

In the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, several states followed the lead of Joseph McCarthy and formed committees to investigate Americans considered to be potentially subversive within states' governments. Students and professors fell victim to the "lavender scare," as public universities forced them to make concessions to their…

For the better part of the twentieth century, student speakers at their graduations from Brown University greeted fellow seniors and guests with substantive, socially conscious addresses. Undergraduate orators used the opportunity to expound on fundamental social questions, frequently discussing politics, academia, human progress, and the…

The six Land Grant colleges and universities across the upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota State, South Dakota State, and Iowa State) all faced unprecedented challenges in the 1890s. The economic depression brought on by the Panic of 1893 saw budget cutbacks and lean times, but the "McKinley Prosperity," combined…

Colleges and universities across the United States have, over the centuries of their existence, gradually developed the systems of governance that we see today. Typically, this has taken the form of a governing board comprised of individuals with some connection to the institution. Although major restructuring of institutional governance may seem…

Angie Debo, educator and historian, wrote thirteen scholarly books, which included material representative of the American Indian experience. In one of her later books, "A History of the Indians of the United States," first published in 1951, she wrote that the story of the American Indian shows a "remarkable record of survival ……

Robert Henry Thurston is presented in this article. He provides one the most significant examples of professionalizing engineering through innovative education and promoting scientific education practices in the late nineteenth century. The son of a draftsmen and steam engine mechanic, Thurston spent his early years in Providence, Rhode Island.…

This article explores the complex contexts and relationships that enabled student civil rights advocates to emerge at Howard University in the 1930s and 1940s. Such histories are valuable given their realistic portrayal of the daily challenges, interpersonal collisions, collaborations, and organizational positioning that made some human rights…

Histories of education in America often discuss how concerns over women's health influenced public opinion on women's participation in higher education in the late nineteenth century. However, these histories almost exclusively focus on literature produced by the medical community--literature claiming that rigorous academic study was detrimental…

This article seeks to analyze the historical origins of the connection between social studies and coaching, which is grounded in the masculine discourse of history, social studies, and athletics. Further, this article explains how history, social studies, and athletics at the secondary school level were constructed as masculine through the…

On the eve of her birthday, August 14, 1904, the young Jewell Legett recorded in her diary that she had "been feeling so strange today … 20 years old! What an age it is! Just the time to be a girl and learn to live" (Legett 1904). Her summer vacation from the 1903-1904 term at Baylor University was spent with her parents and brothers in…