Olivet College: Founded on Radical Principle

On February twenty-fourth, eighteen forty-four, the Reverend John Jay Shipherd and thirty-nine followers arrived by ox-cart at a wooded hilltop in Eaton County with a specific intention: to found a college that would admit students of any race or sex at a time when almost no college in America did either. Shipherd had already co-founded Oberlin in Ohio on similar principles. Michigan refused to grant a charter because of the founders' abolitionist views, so the school operated as Olivet Institute for fifteen years until the legislature relented in eighteen fifty-nine.

Olivet College is now recognized as Michigan's first coeducational college and one of the first in the country to admit Black students. The college also helped start the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association in eighteen eighty-eight, still the oldest collegiate athletic conference in the United States.