In 1953, the MSU Corn Foundation installed a plaque commemorating professor William Beal’s pioneering work in hybridizing maize. This plaque, which still remains in the Beal Botanical Garden today, celebrates Beal as the first person to cross corn, increasing the yield by 53%.
But these claims are untrue. And in 2022, the Beal Botanical Garden staff began to address these falsehoods with a new sign in the garden.
The new message discusses the plaque's inaccuracies and role in ignoring and undermining the work of North American Indigenous peoples in developing maize from a wild grass known as teosinte — a plant drastically different from corn.
Although they still acknowledge Beal’s contributions to modern corn production, the garden has opened a discussion with the community to address the claims on the plaque that has lived on MSU’s campus for over 70 years. This step is one aspect of what garden leadership said is a wider effort to decolonize the garden.
The garden's interim director, Alan Prather, an EEB core faculty member, recalled the wording of the plaque being brought to his attention within the first few weeks of starting his position in 2021. It was then that the staff members began dialogue about how to address it.
“We didn’t think that it was best for us to decide what to do about the (plaque), but rather to open that up for a community discussion,” Prather said. “So that’s what led us to develop that sign because we felt like we couldn’t just leave it unaddressed.”
With a staff of 12, Education Director Maeve Bassett said they felt more perspectives were needed to tackle the situation.
“That's one of the absolutely fantastic things about working at a university, is being able to bring in students that have perspectives, backgrounds, ideas and not just us being the ones who make the call in the garden,” Bassett said. “A lot of it is really highlighting and bringing in the specialties of our students, but also working with other community members and organizations."
Among the perspectives brought into the conversation were local Anishinaabe groups and the Nokomis Cultural Heritage Center, Bassett said, in addition to "pretty much anybody that we can interact with and get their perspective.”
One person consulted was Mikayla Thompson, an MSU graduate and descendant of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
In 2023, Thompson won the “Nurture Your Roots” poetry contest and was formally introduced to the Beal staff. It was then that Prather showed her the plaque, seeking advice on how to address it.
Thompson recognized the importance of the situation, especially because as an academic institution, she said "there's a duty for MSU to portray the correct history and the correct facts."
"When it comes to Indigenous history, we're often pushed under the rug," Thompson said. "As somebody who has learned the absolutely devastating history about the Anishinaabe in this region, MSU, being a land grant university, benefited directly from this history. I think they have this responsibility to tell people about it and try to right those wrongs in any way they can. And I think it starts with telling the real story.”
