As the Michigan Wolverines face off against the Michigan State Spartans this Saturday for the 117th time since their first game in 1898, a familiar voice will resonate throughout the largest college football stadium in the country: the voice of James Earl Jones. Though the renowned actor and U-M alumnus passed away on Sept. 9, his legacy, solidified by iconic films like Star Wars and The Lion King, continues to live on at every Wolverine home game in the Big House. Jones’s professional, commanding, and precise voice embodies his pride in his alma mater. However, a look back at his undergraduate years serves as a reminder of the often contradictory moments of exclusion and inclusion experienced at universities like Michigan over the past eight decades.
Jones grew up in the small, rural community of Dublin in western Michigan, approximately two hours north of Grand Rapids. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and, having overcome a stutter, graduated with 14 other students from Dickson Rural Agricultural High School. Inspired by his English teacher, the shy and quiet Jones took a test and earned a U-M Regents Alumni Scholarship. He traveled several hours north to Traverse City for the exam, where he was the only student of color in the room. Even as a teenager, Jones noticed that despite Michigan having a sizable Indigenous population, diversity was lacking among those selected to compete for its scholarships.
Upon admission, Jones arrived at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1949 with aspirations of becoming a medical doctor, a dream his grandparents held for him. However, his limited high school education left him academically unprepared for the required pre-med courses. He struggled with his studies, particularly in chemistry and a mistaken enrollment in a senior-level composition class during his freshman year. Professors frequently belittled his work, with one using a spelling error to cruelly remark, “Why are you trying to be something you’re not? You’re just a dumb son of a bitch, and you don’t belong at this university.”
Just a few years before the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court case and a full decade before the Greensboro sit-ins, racist experiences in the late 1940s and early 1950s were not uncommon in the U.S. North, including at the University of Michigan. Unlike southern universities with extreme racial segregation policies that prohibited Black and white students from attending school together, the University of Michigan was among the first public universities to admit Black, Latino, Jewish, Catholic, and women students based on academic merit.
Prior to 1950, the number of Black students at U-M and other northern universities was minimal. Largely accelerated by the GI Bill, the percentage of Black students accepted at historically white colleges and universities only grew from . Michigan was no exception: extraordinarily low numbers compared to total enrollment created an environment where Black students faced discrimination and social isolation. While not always overt violence, racist ideology and actions cloaked in the language of high academic standards inflicted deep wounds, particularly on first-generation Black students like Jones.
Like the talented—but limited—number of Black musicians and actors in the postwar era who were given opportunities in the film and music industries, Jones found a sense of belonging—and his voice—in the Theater Department. For the 1953 spring semester production, Jones played the lead character Bret Charles in Deep Are the Roots. Forty years later, his professor, Claribel Baird Halstead, reminisced about her decision to keep him in the spotlight: “In those days audiences didn’t accept white people in Black roles and Black people in white roles…I deserve no credit except to have given him an opportunity to do it, ” This act of kindness from Halstead, however, was a small step in overcoming the other racialized encounters Jones faced in his career. For Jones, it meant working with a group of professors who believed in him and from whom he could learn how to thrive in an academic setting.
Like many first-generation students today, Jones had little to no guidance from family members about college experiences. He often felt alone: “. It was traumatic.” Determined to succeed no matter what, he formed lasting connections with advisors and professors whose mentorship shaped his academic achievements and future career, despite the racism he endured on campus.
Years later, Jones told Michigan students that he was fully aware of the “stunted opportunities that plague Black artists, but he never [was] willing to let them overwhelm him.” When asked about racism hindering acting opportunities even in the 1990s, he responded: “Notice it, notice that it will affect somewhat your chances of getting work. And once you notice it, ignore it. .”
Pressing forward also meant giving back to the university with his time, while also engaging in discussions about race when prompted. He regularly visited Ann Arbor, supporting Professor Halstead and the Theater Department’s activities. And in 2015, at Coach Jim Harbaugh’s request, Jones entered a New York City studio to record the powerful script for the football video—his last documented public narration. On screen, as Jones slowly puts on a headset and begins to speak, the pride he displays for the University of Michigan is a culmination of experiences: an exceptional education; caring faculty mentors; a determination to overcome bigotry and racism; a belief in the significance of the university—and, yes, championship football.
Lorena Chambers is a University of Michigan Postdoctoral Fellow working on the Inclusive History Project, an initiative focused on better understanding the full history of the university, including its record of inclusion and exclusion. For more information, please visit .
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