1865 — The people of Hillsdale celebrate the fall of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, with pealing church bells and bonfires. The windows of the college (by which the sacrifices of the American Civil War were well-known) were illuminated in the night, and described as “the most beautiful sight ever witnessed by our citizens.” The joy in the North would be checked by grief over the death of Abraham Lincoln less than two weeks later.
1886 — Commencement speech remarks of former slave and Hillsdale graduate Jared M. Arter (pictured above) are published, as he urges blacks to “push off from the dark background and inhospitable shores of the past toward a future of nobler manhood; that industry shall displace indolence; providence, improvidence; intelligence, ignorance; virtue, vice.”
-Compiled by Dane Skorup
