Willis Ward and the Track Captaincy

Thank you to the U-M Library, the U-M Bentley Historical Library for creating a searchable digitized archive of the Daily.  

Within seconds I was able to search for and find a few never-before-seen nuggets on a few of my favorite topics like The Little Brown Jug and Willis Ward.

Speaking of Ward, you may know a lot about the 1934 Willis Ward controversy that played out before the Georgia Tech game that year, either from this site or on mgoblue.com, or via the kickass and Emmy-nominated documentary Black and Blue.   I don’t think I had heard about this, though.

It turns more than a few folks raised a suspicious eye when, in May 1934 (yes, months before the Georgia Tech game mess heated up) the U-M track team failed to elect Ward captain of the 1935 squad.   Here’s one of the letters to the Daily in the May 25, 1934 edition:

So nicely done, C.A. Blue.

Thanks to a quick search in the new digital archive, I know that “Murmuring Michigan” is a reference to a piece that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, where the author described a few days on campus in Ann Arbor. As I understand it, he observed a movement of students on campus beginning to rebel against the established norms/biases of the day.  Like racism.

He was right.  In a few months later, the campus exploded before the Georgia Tech game.