History

March 29, 2020

Lauren Bergeron, ’21, was one of just 60 students nationwide chosen to participate in the Council on Undergraduate Research’s “Posters on the Hill,” an event designed to showcase current student research for federal lawmakers and other government officials. Bergeron was further invited to the inaugural Johns Hopkins University Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium, a mega-event involving more than 500 students. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of both April events, she can take solace knowing that Albion is represented among the country’s top student research programs.

February 7, 2020

When Deborah Kanter, the John S. Ludington endowed professor of history and department chair, set out to complete her 20-year journey to chronicle Mexican Catholic parishes in Chicago, her goal was simple. “I wanted to write a book that friends could give their moms for Christmas,” she said. “I wanted to write a book for the general public.”

July 3, 2019

Elijah Shalis, ’02, has always loved history, and when he learned that James Robinson, a slave who fought for American independence, had been all but forgotten, he worked to make sure he received the honors he deserved in the Detroit cemetery where he is buried. And that story has resonated.

May 13, 2019

Despite the obstacles, indignities and insults he faced throughout his life, Judge Damon Keith, a longtime friend of Albion College and valued member of the Albion family, became an icon for justice and a crusader for the disadvantaged. One of the 20th century’s most significant members of the federal bench, Judge Keith passed away April 28. Professor of history Wes Dick (pictured with his friend) offers a tribute.

November 10, 2018

Professor of history Wesley Arden Dick and First-Year Seminar students recently visited Washington, D.C., to recognize Albion College students who served and died in “The Great War,” which eventually became known as World War I and which ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. The group also recognized those from Albion and Albion College who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II and Vietnam.

June 11, 2018

“With America divided in 1968, many pinned their hopes on Robert Kennedy as the presidential candidate who could end the war in Vietnam, revive the war on poverty, and unify Americans across racial lines,” writes Wes Dick, Albion College professor of history. “His promise remains ‘what might have been.’ … Among his legacies are his children, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. packed Goodrich Chapel in 2000 as the keynote speaker for a symposium on environmental activism.”

April 4, 2018

It has been 50 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. But in that time of continued racial strife and turbulence, one thing remains clear: Albion’s story continues to be America’s story.

January 26, 2018

In 2005, the United Nations declared January 27 Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 by the Soviet army. Here, Albion history professor Wes Dick recaps a November visit by his First-Year Seminar students to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

December 6, 2017

An almost forgotten family history reveals a grandfather’s past as a noncombatant war hero in the first book published by Albion’s newest history professor, who is just finishing his first semester on campus. Joseph W. Ho, with University of Michigan emeritus professor Charles Bright, is co-editor of War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937–1938.

September 14, 2017

Ben Greenberg, an investigative journalist who focuses on cold cases and unpunished violence during the Civil Rights Movement, spoke to a standing-room-only audience in Bobbitt Auditorium on September 13 about more recent history for the annual Coy James Memorial Lecture.