Fragments of the 50s: Identifying and Examining a December 1957 Edition of the Detroit Free Press

By Madelyn McKinney

During the hectic summer of 2020, CAP Crew had the opportunity to excavate sections of a mid-twentieth century midden uncovered by water main replacement construction along Service Road, a thoroughfare running east to west through the southern half of campus. Landfills, of course, are like treasure troves for archaeologists, and finding one associated with the decades during which MSU’s population saw some of its biggest growth was especially riveting. From ballet shoes to faunal remains, hygiene products to handwritten notes, and spice jars to MSU-stamped institutional wares, the Service Road collection contains something of interest to everyone. 

Some of the less expected artifacts uncovered during the Service Road excavation were a number of still-legible newspaper fragments––most from Michigan and others from places as far away as Puerto Rico. The majority of these newspaper pieces are precariously held together by decades worth of dirt, making them much too fragile to peel apart. Fortunately for this blog post, however, a few of them could be isolated––and can now be identified! 

Identifying fragmented newspapers can be a simpler process than one might think. A plethora of newspaper archives exist both digitally (in online archives) and materially (within libraries, museums, and other federally, state, and locally-funded preservation offices). The website newspapers.com (owned by Ancestry and unfortunately only accessible via a paid subscription) is a particularly valuable source for finding historic newspapers dating between the 1690s and 2020s. By entering keywords, date ranges, and locations, it’s possible to locate and read the full versions of mere scraps of newspaper like those from Service Road. 

It’s important to note that when entering keywords into an online archive like this one, it’s most productive to use words from articles that have local significance. Articles with national or international relevance were often published in a number of newspapers across the world, so it’s much harder to locate a specific newspaper company and publication date when using these more general headlines. 

I learned this firsthand when I decided to use the first legible headline I saw––“Pope Names 2 Bishops”––in my preliminary search. This was a problem for two main reasons. First, similar articles were published all over the world due to the international significance of the Pope and the Vatican. Second (and much less predictably), this specific segment of the Service Road newspaper page happened to be from a slightly different edition of the newspaper than the one stored within the online archive. 

Now, let me explain what this means––and why it was a bit confusing. The “Pope Names 2 Bishops” article was published in the December 12, 1957 version of the Detroit Free Press––which makes sense given that all of the other fragmentary pages examined from these segments of CAP’s collection also line up with this date and press. Notably, however, the advertisements surrounding the article differ between CAP’s edition of the paper and the archived edition from newspapers.com (see Figure 1). In addition, the spacing between paragraphs also differs between the two––and the articles above and images below “Pope Names Two Bishops” are clearly different depending on which edition is examined. In researching why this was, I learned through Laurel Brake, a professor emerita of literature and print culture, that it wasn’t––and still isn’t––uncommon for daily or weekly newspapers to publish multiple editions, as this helps them to stay on top of the latest and greatest stories––and therefore compete with other newspaper producers (2012, 12). Thus, it’s possible that the edition CAP discovered came out slightly earlier or later than the edition available within newspapers.com’s archives––which is something worth noting (and being cautious of) during future newspaper examinations.

Now that we’ve identified the newspaper and discussed how best to identify such documents, let’s take a look at the actual contents of the paper. Though it is impossible to summarize all 52-pages of advertisements, articles, and lists within a single blog post, I will briefly delve into two major components that I found to be especially entertaining or engaging: a surplus of Christmas advertisements (after all, this did come out less than two weeks before the holiday!) and a few brief mentions of Michigan State University. As you read through the following sections, keep in mind that these were the topics being actively read about by MSU’s students and staff on or around December 12, 1957. We know that this newspaper was read by someone on campus, and with its identification, we’ve now captured a moment in time––a moment that we can understand, if only a little, through reading about the events and items deemed important on this day.    

Let’s now delve into some of the paper’s most interesting holiday advertisements! Many of the largest and most prominent ads in this periodical focus on women’s clothing––especially dresses, winter items (gloves, scarfs, coats), undergarments, shoes, and nightgowns. Interestingly, every women’s clothing advertisement relies on artistic depictions of women with stereotypically idealized proportions––there are no models, photographs, or mannequins (see Figure 2). A variety of other advertisements geared toward women are also present, and these mainly promote  perfumes, bags, and jewelry––though there are plenty of Christmas table settings and holiday food items thrown into the mix.

Beyond women’s clothing, there are also a variety of advertisements for children’s toys presents. Figure 3 (below) shows four toys, all of which are gendered: a doll carriage, a doll wearing a sailor pinafore, a Wild West-themed sheriff’s play set, and a mini fort with 20 small cavalrymen to man it. These toys appear both well-made and especially fun for make-believe play, though it is also worth noting that they are excellent examples of toys that reinforce domestic and social roles. The doll and carriage would have prompted girls to naturally practice and consider activities related to motherhood, while the sheriff’s play set and fort both romanticize the roles of men in war and peacekeeping––likely influencing young boys to practice potentially aggressive and competitive behaviors through play. These trends in gendered toys continue into the twenty-first century (see Blakemore and Centers 2005), though it is important to be aware that in the United States, they largely began during the Industrial Revolution––when toys began to be mass-produced and children were identified as populations from which markets could directly benefit (Schultz 2018; Mumma and Baxter 2018). 

Though there are dozens of other interesting advertisements within this periodical, let’s take a moment now to examine its few references to Michigan State University. My favorite of these is “$3,500 Steer to Put Girl Through MSU,” a brief article about Carol Payne, an 18-year old girl who sold a 1,005 pound Black Angus at the 4-H Junior Livestock auction in order to pay her tuition. According to the American Institute for Economic Research (2024), $3,500 in 1957 would be nearly $40,000 today––and was certainly more than enough to pay Carol’s tuition in 1957! 

The rest of the articles about MSU focus specifically on sports––which is topically less interesting than a cow paying someone’s tuition, but we’ll take what we can get. These articles emphasize one man in particular: Hugh Duffy Daugherty, one of MSU’s most beloved and well-known head football coaches. At this time in 1957, he had been at MSU for 11 years––and other institutions were actively trying to hire him. In spite of this, he remained at Michigan State, citing his love for the institution as his reason for doing so. Evidently, the university loved him back, as he remained the head coach for nearly 20 years before retiring––12 years after which he was inducted into the National Football Foundation’s Hall of Fame (2025). 

And that’s all for this blog post! If there’s interest, I would be happy to return to this edition (or perhaps other papers from Service Road) for further ponderings and analyses. 

Thank you for reading!

Bibliography

American Institute for Economic Research. 2024. Cost of Living Calculator. Accessed November 13, 2025. https://aier.org/cost-of-living-calculator/.

Blakemore, Judith E. Owen, and Renee E. Centers. 2005. Characteristics of Boys’ and Girls’ Toys. Sex Roles 53(9): 619-633.

Brake, Laurel. 2012. The Longevity of ‘Ephemera’: Library Editions of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals and Newspapers. Media History 18(1): 7-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2011.632192.

Detroit Free Press (DFP) [Detroit, Michigan]. 1957. 12 December:1-52. Accessed November 10, 2025. newspapers.com.

Mumma, Katherine, and Jane Eva Baxter. 2018. Creating Desire and Little Consumers: Doll Advertising in US Newspapers, 1860-1900. In Nineteenth Century Childhoods in Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives, edited by Jane Eva Baxter and Meredith A.B. Ellis, pp. 107-126. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 

National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame, Inc. 2025. Duffy Daugherty. Accessed November 13, 2025. https://footballfoundation.org/hof_search.aspx?hof=1851.

Schultz, Jaclyn N. 2018. ‘He Knows a Good Thing When He Sees It!’ Advertising to Children in the US, 1850-1900. In Nineteenth Century Childhoods in Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives, edited by Jane Eva Baxter and Meredith A.B. Ellis, pp. 91-106. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Ben Akey (former Campus Archaeologist) for allowing me to use their newspapers.com subscription while examining these artifacts.