This episode shares a powerful story from 1942 at Michigan State Normal College, where eight college women preparing to become teachers faced discrimination when an African American classmate was excluded from shared housing. In an inspiring act of solidarity, the seven white students refused to participate unless their classmate was included, leading the college to allow an integrated living arrangement. Their experience became a lasting lesson in courage, fairness, and standing together in the face of injustice.
This is Bob Myers from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan History Moment.
Bob Myers:
It was:
They were home economics students at Michigan State Normal College, today's Eastern Michigan University.
Upon graduating, they would become certified teachers, able to pass along the skills they had learned in cooking, cleaning, and budgeting to homec high school students. First, however, they had to spend their senior year in a practice house.
As the name implied, they would use their time in the practice house to make practical use of the skills they had learned. One of those eight students was African American.
Faculty and administrators agreed that they could not permit an African American student to live in the practice house with her Euro American counterparts. She would have to live elsewhere.
Without the experience gained by living in the practice house, she could not qualify for a teaching certificate from the state of Michigan. Without a teaching certificate, her college diploma would be worthless. The other seven women protested.
Their classmate had taken the same courses as they did and was just as qualified. The college remained unmoved. The women could move into the practice house without their classmate, or they could forfeit their teaching certificates.
The students decided to hold out, but they were fearful that they had just thrown away the three years that they had spent in the classroom. The college faculty and administrators blinked first.
It occurred to them that it would be less embarrassing for the college to have an integrated practice house than to have no graduates from the home economics department. They offered the seniors a compromise.
If the single African American student would live on the third floor, separate from her classmates, she could live in the practice house. The Euro American students agreed. All eight young women moved into the practice house. Seven on the second floor and one on the third floor.
Immediately thereafter, two of the women moved up to the third floor to join their colleague.
On graduation day in:
The college had inadvertently taught them that lessons in integrity often come from outside the classroom.
Podcast Intro & Outro:
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