Glancing Back at the History of Hillsdale College

In August 1844, members of the local community of Freewill Baptists resolved to organize their denomination's first collegiate institution. After gathering donations, they established Hillsdale College as Michigan Central College in Spring Arbor, Michigan on December 4, 1844. Although religiously affiliated, the college remained officially nonsectarian. Hillsdale no longer has any denominational affiliation. However, Hillsdale still expect students to follow moral tenets of Christianity as commonly understood in the Christian tradition. A unique feature of the campus is the Statues of Liberty Walk, a walkway lined with depictions of well-known leaders and icons of Western culture. These include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher. A statue of Ronald Reagan was dedicated on October 7, 2011, in the centennial year of his birth. Reagan spoke at the college in 1977, stating, "Hillsdale deserves the appreciation of all who labor for freedom. Hillsdale's charter prohibits any discrimination based on race, religion, or sex, and the College has been credited as the first American college to prohibit this type of discrimination in a charter.