University of Michigan Heritage

Tappan’s End

Michigan's visionary first president was brought down by editors, teetotalers, professors, regents...and his own arrogance.

Henry Philip Tappan

Tappan was the largest figure of a man that ever appeared on the Michigan campus, and he was stung to death by gnats!

– James Burrill Angell

More Stories:

The Negro-Caucasian Club

^“The colored were not part and parcel of the school.^”
– Joseph Leon Langhorne

In the 1920s, black and white students formed an association to promote interracial understanding—but the University resisted.
Carpenter in the Dream Factory

^“People love a touch of the risqué just as they love a cocktail before dinner.^”
– Avery Hopwood

The playwright Avery Hopwood led a life of worldly riches and inner despair.
River Rat

^“Each moment might easily have been our last, but fortunately we were too busy to meditate upon our imminent untimely end.^”
– Professor Elzada Clover, 1938

When a pioneering botany professor set out to explore specimens along the Colorado River, she made discoveries of a different sort.

See all stories