Professional baseball’s last 30-game winner, Denny McLain was the first major-league baseball player suspended since 1924. McLain was later sent to prison when found guilty of charges of racketeering.
For more information, see “Detroit Tiger Denny McLain suspended over bookie allegations”, This Week In Michigan History, Detroit Free Press, February 19, 2012.
On February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed the proclamation “An American Promise.” It formally announced the termination Executive Order 9066, the measure that had resulted in the uprooting of Japanese Americans and their detainment in camps during World War II.
Although E.O. 9066 had ceased to be effective once hostilities had ended, the Japanese American Citizens League and others petitioned the White House to have the termination officially recognized.
For more information see Proclamation 4417 – An American Promise courtesy of the University of California Santa Barbara.
Also mentioned on Gerald Ford Timeline
With the prison-industrial complex, racism, police brutality, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination, and more on the table, Angela Davis didn’t leave any activist’s stone unturned during her visit to Flint on Thursday.
The iconic civil rights activist, author and scholar visited the University of Michigan-Flint campus Thursday, Feb. 19, to speak to students and area residents and inspire them to fight oppression.
Davis worked with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the civil rights movement, and emerged as a leader of the Communist Party during the 1960s. She also founded Critical Resistance, an organization aimed at abolishing the prison-industrial complex. She was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List under false charges, and after 16 months of being incarcerated and an international “Free Angela Davis” campaign, she was acquitted in 1972.
“Forty years ago, we never could’ve imagined struggling for the same issues,” she said on Thursday morning.
Adorned with a black shirt and her recognizable afro, the Birmingham, Ala., native and retired California educator started her morning in the Harding Mott University Center, where she spoke to about 300 students in a question-and-answer session. She then went to the University of Michigan-Flint Theatre, where she gave a lecture to a standing-room-only crowd of about 450 people. After each event, people met Davis and got copies of her book autographed.
Davis spoke against the death penalty and why she wants to abolish the prison system, said that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate is just as important to tackle as anti-black racism, mentioned how feminism should be used as part of the overall struggle for equality, and said it’s time for a new educational system.
“The education that we have now is so repressive. It’s an education that has come to replicate the process of imprisonment,” Davis said, adding that children aren’t naturally going to sit in one place without moving. “We need to get rid of this educational system. We need to build something new that makes kids take pleasure in learning. Education should allow kids to be different.”
For the full article, see William E. Ketchum III, “Angela Davis speaks civil rights, anti-Muslim discrimination, and police brutality during UM-Flint visit”, MLive, February 19, 2015.
President Biden is in Portage, Michigan, where he is visiting one of the three manufacturing plants where Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is produced, according the White House. Governor Whitmer accompanied him on the tour.
The President is touring the facility and meeting with workers who are helping manufacture the vaccine. Biden will then deliver remarks.
Pfizer’s vaccine won the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization in December, and is being delivered to millions of people in the US and UK.
Both vaccines on the US market — developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — require two doses to reach about 95% efficacy, and the second doses were intended to be administered 21 days and 28 days after the first, respectively.
A Porter coach at the front of the Union Depot, which would later be converted into Clara’s Restaurant.
Back in the day when you arrived by train, you would have taken a horse-drawn coach from the station to your final destination. Lansing was no different and the largest livery in the city was the W.H. Porter Omnibus Hack and Livery. The business was established in 1866 by John C. Adams. In 1880 William C. Porter purchased half of the company from Adams and two years later bought Adams out. The livery was located on the south west corner of Washtenaw Street and Capitol Avenue, where the Cooley Law School Center is today. In 1906 the business had forty-two horses and operated two omnibuses, two baggage wagons, twelve hacks and twenty-five assorted vehicles, i.e. phaetons, surreys, stanhopes (?), etc.
The Porter Livery at 300 S. Capitol
But the business would not last. On February 20, 1908 a disastrous fire struck the Porter Livery, tragically thirty horses died in the blaze. The Lansing fire department battled the fire even though the wailing of the horses unnerved many of the firefighters. Orry (Orla) Rolland (Rowland) who was staying at the Octagon House entered the back of the livery and at the risk of his own life rescued several of the horses that were stabled there. William’s son, James also attempted to rescue a horse owned by Oscar Downey, but was kicked by one and barely escaped the fire. Oscar himself, entered the livery to rescue his horse and two others. The firemen were supported by Little Downey, Uneeda Lunch Room, Mrs. George Potter and the Lawrence Bakery who served hot coffee and food to the firemen who battled the blaze. (LJ 2/21/1908 and SR 2/21/1908) In 1916 the site was redeveloped as an Automobile salesroom. (LSJ 4/1/1916)
Source : “Life Before the Automobile“, Reposted from Lost Lansing, August 1, 1916.
By 1909 it was obvious that the automobile was not just a passing fad, nor was it a toy for the wealthy. In Detroit, Michigan, a group of eight businessmen organized a new company to produce an automobile which would sell for less than $1,000 (that’s the equivalent to a bit more than $26,000 today). The new company was named the Hudson Motor Car Company after Joseph L. Hudson, an entrepreneur and founder of Hudson’s department store. Hudson provided the capital for the new company while Roy D. Chapin, Sr., provided the automotive experience. Chapin had worked with automotive pioneer Ransom E. Olds.
Hudson Motor Car Company was organized in February and their first car was driven out of the small factory in July 3, 1909. The Hudson Twenty was one of the first low-priced cars in the United States and 4,000 were sold in 1909; 4,508 were sold in 1910; and 6,485 in 1911.
The company was later absorbed by the American Motors Corporation.
Does anyone remember the Hudson in Driving Miss Daisy?
Source : Michigan Historical Calendar, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
Hudson Motor Car Company wikipedia entry
Hudson Picture Gallery by John MacDonald.
History 101: The Hudson Automobile, August 25, 2014.
Michigan Governor Fred W. Green and 15 other state officials flew from Lansing to Kalamazoo for a conference — the first aviation junket in state history.
More About Governor Green
Clearly one of Michigan’s “Good Roads” governors, Green enthusiastically supported expansion and upgrading the state highway system during his two terms as chief executive (1927-1930). He was the “inventor” of the yellow no-passing line, first used in Michigan, which eventually became a standard safety device on highways everywhere. He was one of the early proponents of a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac and ordered the first survey to determine the feasibility of a span to link Michigan’s two peninsulas. A successful industrialist, Green’s public life prior to his election as governor included 12 years as mayor of Ionia and a stint as chairman of the Ionia County Road Commission.
Sources :
WAKV (Plainwell, Michigan), The Memory Station Facebook Page
About five minutes previous to blast off time Tuesday, some 150 students, professors, visitors and workmen crowded into the lobby of Kellogg center to watch Astronaut John Glenn rocket into history.
Viewers sat on the floor, stood on tables, sat and stood on the window sills and on the counter to get a peek at the television set in the center’s lobby.
It was a serious group. Some of them had been there for hours waiting for the historic moment when Glenn was fired into orbit.
Source : Lansing State Journal, February 20, 1962.
Check out Godspeed, John Glenn : Americans in Orbit, Time picture essay.
Check out Happy Anniversary John Glenn, Time picture essay.
To learn more about the original seven astronauts, check out
Selecting the Mercury seven : the search for America’s first astronauts / Colin Burgess. The names of the seven Mercury astronauts were announced in April 1959 amid a flurry of publicity and patriotism. This work provides biographical details of all thirty-two finalists for the seven coveted places as America’s pioneering astronauts. All of the candidates were among the nation’s elite pilots involved in testing new supersonic aircraft capabilities. Most had served as wartime fighter and bomber pilots; some were test pilots on top secret and sophisticated aviation projects, while others were fleet admirals, prisoners of war, and proposed pilots for spaceflight programs such as the Dyna-Soar (X-20). The names of all 32 finalists have been kept secret until very recently. “Selecting the Mercury Seven” also relates the history and difficulties behind the initial choice of candidates. The lives, motivations, military careers, and achievements of the unsuccessful twenty-five finalists are explored first in fully authorized biographies. Test pilots for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, each man has a fascinating and very different story to tell. All thirty-two men had to endure meticulous, demeaning, and brutal week-long medical examinations at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico. This was followed by another torturous week at the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory in Ohio, where they were subjected to extreme fitness and physiological testing, the sole purpose of which was to sort out the Supermen from the near-supermen. The final part of the book examines the accomplishments and spaceflights of the seven successful candidates, bringing their amazing stories right up to date.
Richard Allen “Dick” York (September 4, 1928 – February 20, 1992) was an American actor.
He is best remembered as Darrin Stephens on “Bewitched,” the mortal husband of wife Samantha Stephens. Dick was a beloved actor throughout the 60s due to his role on the series and went on to be in the 60s classic film, Inherit the Wind. Dick took his good looks and charm into his later life.
Unfortunately, York died of complications from emphysema at Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids . He was just 63. He’s buried in Rockford, Michigan.
For more information, see Dick York wikipedia entry.
Public service is in Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate’s blood.
“My dad was a firefighter for the city of Detroit, and my mom was a public school teacher in Detroit,” said Tate.
Their acts of service laid the foundation for who and what he would become.
“They’re definitely two people that definitely motivate me,” Tate continued.
Tate has served his country in the Marine Corps, his MSU Spartan teammates on the football field, and his community as a lawmaker.
He is now serving Michigan’s 102nd Legislature, as the first Black speaker of the house.
Source : Donovan Long, “Family inspires Speaker Tate’s historic role in MI Legislature“, WXYZ TV, Detroit Channel 7, February 20, 2023.