A small museum in Bath Township is receiving $25,000 to help commemorate the deadliest school attack in American history.
In May 1927, a school board member rigged explosives at Bath Consolidated School. The attack killed 45 people – mostly schoolchildren – and injured more than 50.
The Bath School Museum is fundraising to construct a building and preserve local history.
The $25,000 it recently received is part of the America250MI grant program, which is allocating $2 million to preserve Michigan history to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The museum will use the funding to buy a scanner so staff can digitize the collection.
According to Chris Hagerman, the museum’s vice president, that means artifacts will be better preserved and easier to share.
“We get requests, I'd say once a month, from folks all over the United States,” Hagerman said. “Our most recent one was a professor at Sam Houston [State] University who was doing some research on it. Making digital copies of our documents will make it easier for folks like him to have access to what we don't already have online.”
Hagerman, who is the grandson of a survivor, said it’s not just researchers who are interested. Someone from out of town wrote a folk song about the attack. Podcasters, documentary filmmakers and news outlets have been increasingly reaching out over the past five years.
“Our internet presence has become bigger,” Hagerman said.
This growing online presence is bringing more people to the area, Hagerman said. It also shows that contemporary violence in schools isn’t completely novel.
“People see this as an important story, and ultimately that’s our goal," Hagerman said "With our current culture, how do we prevent future attacks, future school-related problems like this, other than learning the history of it?”
With the growing attention, Hagerman said the organization needs more funding so the committee can open its own building.
Right now, the museum’s collections are nestled in the Bath Middle School auditorium. Hagerman said the goal was to open a new building next year for the hundredth anniversary of the massacre, but the committee didn’t secure enough funding.
The committee has worked with the township’s state senator, Sam Singh, to get the museum’s funding on the state budget, but it “just hasn’t worked out,” Hagerman said. They’ve had conversations with the appropriations committee.
“It’s just a matter of getting on the budget and trying to get that money ultimately,” Hagerman said.
The museum is still accepting donations at its website.
