aergas's blog

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the opening of the Avern L. Cohn Papers, now accessible to researchers and the public. The materials in this collection represent the scope of Judge Avern Cohn’s professional life and his wide-ranging interests and activities, from history to family matters and philanthropy to leisure travel. The papers include correspondence, opinions and orders, speeches and writings, scrapbooks, files on a large array of topics and some audio-visual materials.  read more »

A lesser-known, and maybe surprising, source for historians and researchers looking at 20th-century race relations in Detroit are the Jewish Community Council Records, part of the Jewish Community Archives at the Reuther Library.

This large collection documents grassroots discussions and actions in Detroit’s Jewish community and the wider urban community particularly from the 1940s to the 1970s.  read more »

Recently processed and made available to researchers is the collection Wayne State University English Department Records, with documents dating from the late 1920s to the 1980s. The processing of this collection was made possible in part through the generosity of Leslie Keyes and Hillary Keyes, daughters of former WSU faculty member Daniel Keyes.  read more »

Civil rights activist Viola Gregg Liuzzo was remembered and honored on July 23, 2019, when a new sculpture, by local artist Austen Brantley, was dedicated at the Detroit park named after her.

Liuzzo, born in 1925 and a mother of five living in the Detroit area, attended classes at Wayne State University for several years in the early 1960s. In 1965, she drove to Selma, Alabama, to join activists at voter-registration drives and marches led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  read more »