Destination Renovation

1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Act, which provided each eligible state with 30,000 acres from the 10.7 million acres of federal land expropriated from 245 tribal nations in the early 19^th century. The land, or proceeds from its sale, would establish land-grant colleges, whose purpose was “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” 

1870 At the urging of Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill under the Morrill Act to establish and maintain the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The first students enrolled at the college in 1873, which was renamed the Ohio State University in 1878. 

1879 The Ohio State University Board of Trustees resolved that “A Department of History and Philosophy be established in connection with the Ohio State University, and that, for the present, the department be placed under the charge of an Assistant Professor, whose salary shall be $1500 per annum.” John T. Short, a Leipzig-educated historian, served as the department’s first and only faculty member until his death in 1883. In collaboration with George Bancroft, Herbert Baxter Adams, and other prominent historians, Short made plans for a journal of history and political science that led to the founding of the American Historical Review in 1895. 

1883 Cynthia U. Weld succeeded Short as the department’s lone faculty member and became its first female professor. According to Walter John Heddesheimer (PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University, 1974), “Following Short's death, the trustees considered themselves ex­tremely fortunate to secure Ohio University professor Cynthia V. Weld in mid-year. Taking the place of a revered teacher is seldom easy, and Weld also faced discrimination because of her sex and opposition due to her adherence to the recitation method. Students demanded her dismissal almost as soon as she arrived on campus.”

1885 George Wells Knight succeeded Weld as the department’s faculty member. He had received the first doctorate in history granted by the University of Michigan, and his dissertation became the first monograph published by the fledgling American Historical Association.

1887 The university administration created the Department of History and Political Science.

1894 Lucy Adelaide Booth received her Ph.D., having defended her dissertation, “The Poor Law of Ohio.” Hers was the second Ph.D. conferred by the university and preceded the organization of the Graduate School in 1911. Booth was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. at Ohio State and the first to do so in History. She became a history professor at Iowa Wesleyan College.

1898 The Department was divided into the Department of American History and Political Science and the Department of European History. In 1909, Political Science became a separate department.

1910 Female students created the History Club to counter the male-dominated Political Science club. The photograph here shows the History Club in 1922.

1916 First courses on Latin American History: “Colonial Period of Latin America” and “History of the Latin American Republics” taught by Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, a specialist on American history. Professor George Wells Knight, another Americanist, had been teaching graduate courses on “US and Latin America, 1800-1905” since 1910. Professor Lawrence F. Hill, hired in 1922, would become the department’s first specialist in Latin American History.

1925 The Departments of American History and of European History merged into a single Department of History.

1926 First courses on Asian History: “The Far East” and “Diplomatic History of the Far East” taught by Professor Paul H. Clyde, the department’s first specialist on East Asia. Previously, Professor Wilbur H. Siebert had taught courses on European relations with East Asia since 1905 under the title, “Europe and the Asiatic Question.”

1942 First course on Middle East History: “The Near Eastern Question, 1815 to the Present” taught by Professor Sydney N. Fisher, the department’s first specialist on the Middle East. Before him, Professor Wilbur H. Siebert taught courses on European relations with the Middle East since 1902 under the titles, “Europe and Turkey: The Eastern Question,” and “The Near East: The European Powers vs. the Turks.”

1946 Helen Gray Edmonds received her Ph.D., having defended her dissertation, “The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1895-1901.” She was the first African American graduate student to receive a Ph.D. in the department. Edmonds went on to join the faculty at North Carolina Central University, where she served as a Professor of History, Chair of the History Department, and the Dean of the Graduate School. Edmonds was the first African American woman to serve as Dean of a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the United States and the first African American woman to second the nomination for President of the United States, which she did in 1956 for Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Republican National Convention. She received numerous awards for her teaching and scholarship, including the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction in 1988. 

1955 After Weld's tenure as head of the Department from 1883-1885, no other female professors joined the faculty until 1955, when Professor Mary E. Young came to Ohio State. One of the first scholars to write on Native American History and closely affiliated with the American left, Young played an active role on campus until her departure for the University of Rochester in 1973.

1959 “Historians Sign Letter Opposing Discrimination,” The Lantern (November 9, 1959).

1968 First course in African American History: “American Negro History,” taught by Professor Merton Dillon. The creation of “courses in Negro history especially assessing the Negro’s economic contribution to this country” was among the eight demands presented by African American students to the Executive Dean of Student Relations in February 1968. When their demands were not met, these students occupied the Administration Building for five hours on April 26. The course above was taught the following Fall term, changing its title to “The Afro-American History in the History of the United States” one year later. Also in 1968, a department faculty member, Professor David E. Green, burned his draft card in his American Foreign Policy class on April 5, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. “One must honor the memory of King by honoring the things he stood for,” Green said. He was fired and faced a Federal indictment, resulting in a $1,500 fine and a three-year suspended sentence. 

1970 First course in Women’s History offered: “Attitudes to Women since the Middle Ages” taught by history instructors Mavis Mate and Carol Loss. In Winter 1971, instructor Helen Weinland and Professor Mary E. Young taught “A History of Women’s Movements in the United States and Great Britain.” These courses were created in response to student demands issued in the Spring of 1970 by the Ad Hoc Strike Committee.

1972 First courses in African History: “Africa in the 19th Century,” and “Leadership and Mass Movements in Contemporary Africa” taught by Professor Tatira Zwinoira. Courses on European relations with Africa were taught in the department by Wilbur H. Siebert since 1910 under the title, “Europe and Africa, India, and Australia,” and by Lowell Ragatz since 1951 under the title, “The Expansion of Europe: Africa and the Western World in the 19th and 20th Centuries.” 1972 also marked the first course in Native American History: “The Indian in American Civilization,” taught by Professor Mary E. Young. It covered “American Indian-white relations from colonial times to the present.”

1973 Tullia Hamilton was hired as the first African American faculty member in the department. She taught Women’s History and African American History. In 1981, she left academia to join the Columbus Foundation where she eventually reached the rank of vice president. She later became the leader of the St. Louis Community Foundation. She is pictured here seated in the second row, third from right, in a 1977 photograph of history faculty. 

1975 Dulles Hall opened and became the new home of the Department of History. The building is named for Foster Rhea Dulles, who joined the department in 1941 following a career in journalism that included serving as Beijing correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He was Chair of the department from 1953 to 1958, and he taught at Ohio State until his retirement in 1965. He published over 20 books, including China and America (1946); Labor in America (1949); and The Civil Rights Commission, 1957-1965 (1968).  

1992 First course in LGBTQ+ History: “Historical Perspectives on Sexuality: Same Sex Sexuality in the Western World,” taught by Professor Leila Rupp.

1993 First course in environmental history: “American Environmental History,” taught by Professor Randolph Roth. 

1997 First course in Latinx history: “Chicano History from the Spanish Colonial Period to the Present Era,” taught by Professor Valerie Mendoza.

1998 First course in Asian American History: “Introduction to Asian American History,” taught by Professor Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.

1999 Founding of the Goldberg Program for Excellence in Teaching. The program (later renamed the Goldberg Center) honors the memory of Professor Harvey Goldberg, a faculty member from 1950 to 1962. Goldberg’s former students helped established this program to commemorate his outstanding teaching. The Goldberg Center’s goal is to further the History Department’s mission by providing resources to teach history through technology-enhanced learning. 

2000 Leila Rupp appointed Department Chair, the second woman to hold this position after Weld. 

2003 Dedication of historic marker in honor of Wilbur H. Siebert, who taught in the department 1893-1925. His pioneering research on the Underground Railroad was published in 1898 as The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom.