Galleries. It is literally a walkthrough you come to the museum. It is at the end of the ice age. We talk about the first Indigenous Peoples lived here and go to the end of the 20th century. We are standing in our exhibit the first peoples. It talks about the Indigenous People who lived in michigan for thousands of years before the arrival of europeans. It is one we just recently renovated. The first is this mural that is painted. It shows the story of the anishinaabek people through four seasons. One of the things it tells is the advanced society they had before europeans arrived. It was just a little different than the western civilization. They chose to live off of the land and not try to control the land. They engaged, spends a lot of their time really working in harmony with the lands to meet all their basic needs. In this mural, things to point out is the structures. There are a lot of concessions that nativetions americans all lived in teepees. In michigan, they lived in structures called wigwams. We have an illustration of one here. And we have a mock one here. They would use saplings of birch or maple to make this frame and then overlay it with strips of birch bark. Sometimes woven mats. They would fill it with grasses for insulation. They would live in these yearround. The nice thing about them is they are pretty compact and mobile. They could take their birch bark off and move from place to place as seasons changed. Now we have moved into the gallery of how michigan became a state. Michigan was slow to settle due to swamplands and other things like that. The opening of the erie canal in 1825 helped spread migration from the eastern states. By 1835, the territory of michigan felt it had reached congresss requirements for becoming a state. We have the right population numbers, had a written constitution from 1835. Our governor appealed to congress to become a state, and it was rejected. Because there was some unsettled business between the state of michigan and the state of ohio, as in who would own toledo. Both states saw it as a very valuable port on lake erie and the river that would help with transportation. It took about two years. They called it the toledo war. Michigan finally agreed that if the country would let it become a state, they would let toledo become part of ohio. As a consolation prize, michigan got the western half of the Upper Peninsula. Ohioans and michiganans agree that michigan got the better deal, because that is where they found the iron ore in the rich deposits that helped her she can helped michigan become the rich manufacturing state it did. The northern half of the lower peninsula was rich with native forests, largely pines. Also explorer surveyor Douglas Houghton went up and found natural iron ore and copper deposits. So in the last half of the 19th century, most of the lumber in the lower part of the lower peninsula was cut down and harvested. Fullscale mining efforts began in the Upper Peninsula for copper and iron ore. When you are extracting the copper and iron ore, it rarely comes out perfectly pure. This is copper or that has other impurities in it that necessitated the building of some of michigans first factories to process, melting smelting, forges to take the Raw Materials and purify them to become the pure copper used in items such as ingots and pots and candlesticks and other things. All of this early manufacturing to process this raw or set michigan up to be a major Manufacturing Center in the early 19th century. Some of the earliest Manufacturing Industries and michigan were related to transportation. We had Carriage Companies operating out of flint. Railcar Companies Operating out of detroit. Shipbuilding was a Huge Industry in detroit. One of the biggest early Manufacturing Centers in michigans history was a fact that michigan, by 1900, had become the stove capital of the world. Jeremiah and james dwyer had three of the four most successful stove companies in detroit history. Here is an example of some of their work made out of iron mind in the Upper Peninsula. About 1900, michigan really became known for the industry that it is still known for today, and that is the manufacturer of automobiles. In order for that to happen, we needed the successes from the early industry. Money and capital to to invest in these new companies. Lumbering and mining. We also had the infrastructure and the factories that made the stoves, made the transportation vehicles. It could be repurposed for this new phenomenon of the gasoline engine. The last piece that helps michigan become the motor state, was the ingenuity of some of the early founders of the Automobile Industry, from henry ford, Whose Assembly line is a famous. This is a recreation of his Highland Park assembly line. To chrysler and durrant, founder of general motors. This big, exciting boom in manufacturing and the Automobile Industry was huge, particularly in southeastern michigan. At the same time, though northern part of michigan was still largely farming, but the advances in technology, particularly the vaseline the gasoline engine, resulted in new technologies like the motorized tractor. Other breakthroughs really helped usher in a new era of farming in michigan, allowing family farms to grow into sustainable businesses. Early in the 20th century, almost 25 of Michigan Farmers were dairy farmers. So while the factories are booming and southeast michigan, we have farming on a larger scale happening. So both worlds existing simultaneously. We have now moved into the part of the museum that talks about michigan during world war ii, particularly the war production that took place. In 1940, right before the u. S. Entered world war ii, our president , franklin d. Roosevelt, put a call out. Pres. Roosevelt we must be the great arsenal of democracy. Tobi michigan, and detroit in particular, were quick to answer the call. Most factories switched over to war manufacturing, including all of the automobile factories. One of the most successful factories that was built to make products for the war was ford motor companys will overrun the willow run plant. This mural shows the innovation of making planes on an assembly line. The plant started construction in 1941. It was completed in 1942. By 1943, 40,000 people were working to build airplanes in this plant. By the end of the war, the factory had built just under 9000 b24 bombers. At one point, they were rolling one off the line every 63 minutes. Wartime work was very different. Most of the ablebodied men who have worked in factories went off to serve in the war. At this plant, there was mass migration of people coming up from the south. Detroit was so overcrowded that they had to live in tents in vacant lots. The war gave opportunity to women and people of color, particularly africanamericans, to get these factory jobs for the first time in history. The women who are working on that airplane worked as riveters, assembling things. Michigan made a lot of artillery shells. Women would build the shells that would be used in cannons and guns and bullets. The impact of the war production on michigan really changed the fabric of the workforce in the state. We will end our tour in our 1957 detroit auto show. This is very fitting because it shows how over the last century and a half, manufacturing in michigan made it a very prosperous state. It was the era of the classic muscle car. From Indigenous People to lumber to miners to Auto Industry giants, these individuals have worked with and lived with and used michigans Natural Resources in a way to benefit themselves and help our state grow. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you can watch this and other programs on the history of communities across the country ur. Cspan. Org citiestoru this is American History tv, only on cspan 3. Wine banks recounts her time as a prosecutor during the watergate investigation of president nixon and his aides. The interview is from the Richard Nixon president ial Library Oral History collection and was conducted by its former Library Director in 2008. Host im director of the Richard Nixon president ial Library Museum in yorba linda, california. Today i have the honor and privilege to be interviewing jill winebanks. Thank you for participating. Ms. Winebanks thank you for asking me. Host my pleasure. How was it that you came to join Watergate Special prosecution force . Ms. Winebanks i was a prosecutor for the organized crime and racketeering section. Then for the labor racketeering erytion, and had a v prosecution record, and they were looking for experienced prosecutors. I took a chance, because