On this day, Marian Anderson made U-M history as first Black female speaker, and Slaughterhouse Five was freed from a school ban in Michigan.
TRANSCRIPT
After nearly a dozen performances at the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium, contralto Marian Anderson on this day in 1959 received an honorary degree in music from the Wolverines, just a few weeks after she sang in the famed hall as part of her Farewell Concert Tour. In the process, Anderson became both the first woman, and the first Black commencement speaker for the U of M’s graduation ceremony.
And today, a win for anti-censorship in 1972. The year before, Kurt Vonnegut’s then-new novel Slaughterhouse Five was banned from Oakland County schools from a ruling by Circuit Court Judge Arthur E. Moore, on the grounds that it was anti-religious. But June 12th of 1972, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned that decision saying the state was overreaching in regard to the first amendment, and public school children were well on the path to learn about the time-travels of Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim.