AADL Talks To: Elmo Morales, owner of Elmo's T-Shirts

Thu, 05/09/2024 - 5:39pm

In this episode, AADL Talks with Elmo Morales, owner of Elmo’s T-shirts, currently at 17 Nickels Arcade and previously at a long-time storefront on Main Street. Elmo came to the University of Michigan in 1964 on a track scholarship and has lived here ever since. He recalls his time at U-M; his 30-year career as a physical education instructor with the Ann Arbor Public Schools; how he helped start the Ann Arbor Track Club and turn the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run into a popular community event; and some of his other business ventures over the years.

AADL Talks To: Bill Ayers, Former U-M Student Activist and Member of the SDS and Weather Underground

Wed, 04/03/2024 - 10:21am

Bill Ayers is a retired Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. During his time in Ann Arbor during the 1960s, he served as director of Ann Arbor's experimental Children's Community School; Education Secretary for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); and co-founder of the militant Weather Underground organization, which originated in Ann Arbor in 1969 as a far left-wing revolutionary party. 

Ayers traces the path of his political awakening from wide-eyed college freshman to seasoned student organizer and educator. He reflects on the tumultuous moral dilemma he and many activists faced as the Vietnam War raged on in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He discusses the factionalism within the SDS leadership that resulted in the formation of the Weather Underground; how the strands of student activism during this turbulent time were rooted in the moral agenda outlined by Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; and his lifelong pedagogic commitment to education.