Introduction

The Spring 2021 issue of The Michigan Historical Review features five research articles, one research note, and sixteen book reviews.

In "The History of a Sample Michigan Land Grant, 1873-1920," Le Roy G. Barnett notes that during the second half of the nineteenth century a number of land grants were given to various entities by the State of Michigan and the federal government to help improve Michigan's transportation network. About ten of these beneficiaries received 100,000 acres or more, property that was then sold or leased to pay for the work that had been done. A real estate portfolio of that size usually required a field crew to determine the nature and value of the acquisition, and then a sales office to handle marketing of the terrestrial reward. To explore how well (or poorly) this system worked, Barnett presents a case study of how one of the awardees operated, providing some valuable clues as to how the other recipients went about disposing of their territorial gains.

Janna Jones offers the issue's next article, "The Sculpture of Marshall Fredericks and the Rise and Fall of the Midwestern Mall." Jones focuses on the history of the Northland Center Mall in Southfield, Michigan, and a limestone sculpture created for the mall by the Michigan-based sculptor Marshall Fredericks. The Northland Center, designed by Victor Gruen (the architectural pioneer of the suburban mall), opened in 1954. At the time, it was the largest enclosed mall in the world. Boy and Bear, an 8½-foot tall sculpture that weighs twelve thousand pounds, stood at the mall's entrance the day it opened. According to Jones, Fredericks's sculpture was adored and literally embraced by millions of mallgoers for the next sixty-one years, until the mall fell into receivership in 2015. Employing a methodology she dubs the "Biography of Artifacts," Jones details the history of Boy and Bear to analyze the popularity and decline of Northland Center, while also explaining the cultural significance of Marshall Fredericks's sculpture.

Next is Richard Gross and Craig P. Howard's "A Century to Publish Clarence Burton's Legacy for America." More than a century ago, the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society sponsored the translation of hundreds of French archival documents related to the exploration of Early America and the American imperial ambitions of Louis XIV. Correcting the widely criticized nineteenth-century transcripts in the Library of Congress, these translations remain the most accurate collection of such primary sources in the world. According to Gross and Howard, financial difficulties and academic arrogance prevented their publication for generations; but technology now allows the Detroit Public Library to make this treasure available to both scholars and the general public, through discoverable PDFs.

In the following article, John Aerni-Flessner and Claire Marks-Wilt trace the history of Urban Renewal in Lansing through a collaborative research project involving undergraduate students and their course instructor. "Digitally Documenting Urban Renewal in Lansing, 1930s-1960s" explores how by looking in fine-grain detail at the block and individual house level, the project reveals the patchwork of discrimination African Americans faced in accessing housing in the mid-twentieth century in Lansing. Showing how this discrimination also thwarted the inter-generational accrual and transfer of wealth, the authors highlight why the wealth gap persists between African American families and those of European descent. As the students in the classes that conducted this research presented the materials through a public-facing website, Aerni-Flessner and Marks-Wilt also explore how digital history in general, and digital public history specifically, can benefit universities, students, and community groups. In particular, the authors argue that the strength of the project stems from its ability to present to the public both primary source documents digitized from the archive and secondary interpretations crafted by the students. By mapping all the sites on a website, the project also allows for a consideration of how spatial relations played important roles in shaping the lives of Lansing residents, a point more often overlooked by traditional historical scholarship centered only on written texts. Thus, the authors show how digital history has great potential not only to bring historical scholarship...