Happy 178th Birthday, Hillsdale!
Written by Doug Goodnough
December 4 marks the annual “Founders’ Day” at Hillsdale College. As a student of history and now an employee of the College, I am gradually being re-educated on Hillsdale’s long and storied past as a groundbreaking and exceptional institution.
At White & Blue Weekend, I was truly amazed at Dr. Peter Jennings’ presentation on Hillsdale College’s involvement in the Civil War. I had no idea that my alma mater had more students fighting for the Union than any school not named West Point or the Naval Academy. There were even a couple of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients and numerous other heroes from that war. And I was a bit embarrassed to not fully know the significance of the Civil War monument that proudly stands between the statues of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln on campus.
I quickly discovered alumna Elizebeth Smith Friedman from the class of 1915. She is arguably the College’s most important graduate, going on to help America and its allies win two World Wars and dismantle Mafia international smuggling operations during Prohibition as a code breaker. There’s a link to a documentary by Hillsdale students recently released on her life and work. Click here, and make the time to watch her incredible story.
Speaking of documentaries, the one chronicling the 1955 football team is also one to watch. “A Better Kind of Glory” tells the story of the Dales, who were undefeated and regarded as one of the top teams in the country when they were selected to play in the Tangerine Bowl on New Year’s Day in Orlando, Florida. It would be the first bowl bid in school history—but only if they left behind four black Hillsdale players. What did Hillsdale choose to do? The right thing, of course.
During last year’s 50/60-Year Reunion event, an attendee pulled me aside and told me she had brought a stack of old college magazines and publications and wondered if I would be interested in having them. Of course I said yes, and just recently started perusing through some publications from the 1960s and 1970s. An issue of Hillsdale Magazine from 1978 had an interesting story by the esteemed Lillian Comar, a Hillsdale historical legend in her own right. Her article, “Irrespective of Nationality, Creed, Color, or Sex,” had some fascinating nuggets about Hillsdale’s extraordinary past. Here are just a few:
- Hillsdale was the first college in Michigan and the second in the nation “to admit women on an equality with men.” In fact, Livonia Benedict—a female—was one of the first five students to be enrolled at the College when it formed in a leaky deserted wooden store in Spring Arbor, Michigan, in 1844.
- And while the College didn’t (and still doesn’t) keep records of nationality, creed, or color, we know that African-American students also attended Hillsdale. Jared Maurice Arter was born into slavery in 1852, but eventually found his way to the College in 1882. After receiving an honorary doctorate from the College in 1885, he went on to become a noted scholar and minister.
- A photo of the 1895 football team shows Robert Porter Sims, an African-American who also served on the staff of The Wolverine (now The Winona).
- Cherokee Joseph Manus was the starting guard on the MIAA Championship Hillsdale football team in 1893. After leaving campus, he was eventually elected a member of Oklahoma’s first state legislature.
Sense a theme here? I do.
From its founding, Hillsdale didn’t care where people came from or what their gender or skin color was. Nearly 200 years later, it still doesn’t.
Happy 178th birthday, Hillsdale!
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in December 2022