Battle Creek is a city in northwestern Calhoun County, Michigan, United States, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 52,731. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Calhoun County. Nicknamed "Cereal City", it is best known as the home of WK Kellogg Co and the founding city of Post Consumer Brands. In Battle Creek, the Kellogg brothers invented the first cereal by accident in an attempt to make granola.

One local legend says Battle Creek was named after an encounter between a federal government land survey party led by Colonel John Mullett and two Potawatomi in March 1824. The two Potawatomi had approached the camp asking for food because they were hungry as the U.S. Army was late delivering supplies promised to them under the 1821 Treaty of Chicago. After a protracted discussion, the Native Americans allegedly tried to take food. One of the surveyors shot and seriously wounded one Potawatomi. Following the encounter, the survey party retreated to Detroit. Early white settlers called the nearby stream Battle Creek River and the town took its name from that.

Another folk etymology is attributed to the local river, which was known as Waupakisco by Native Americans. The Waupakisco or Waupokisco was supposedly a reference to a battle or fight fought between indigenous tribes before the arrival of Europeans. However, Virgil J. Vogel, professor emeritus of history and social science at Harry S. Truman College in Chicago, believes the native name has "nothing to do with blood or battle".

In about 1774, the Potawatomi and the Ottawa Native American tribes formed a joint village near the future Battle Creek, Michigan. The first permanent European settlements in Battle Creek Township, after the removal of the Potawatomi to a reservation, began about 1831. Westward migration from New York and New England had increased to Michigan following the completion of the Erie Canal in New York in 1824. Most settlers chose to locate on the Goguac prairie, which was fertile and easily cultivated. A post office was opened in Battle Creek in 1832 under Postmaster Pollodore Hudson. The first school was taught in a small log house about 1833 or 1834. Asa Langley built the first sawmill in 1837. A brick manufacturing plant, called the oldest enterprise in the township, was established in 1840 by Simon Carr and operated until 1903. The township was established by act of the legislature in 1839.

In the antebellum era, the city was a major stop on the Underground Railroad, used by fugitive slaves to escape to freedom in Michigan and Canada. It was the chosen home of noted abolitionist Sojourner Truth after her escape from slavery.

Battle Creek figured prominently in the early history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It was the site of a Protestant church founding convention in 1863. The denomination's first hospital, college, and publishing office would also be constructed in the city. When the hospital and publishing office burned down in 1902, the church elected to decentralize, and most of its institutions were relocated. The first Adventist church (rebuilt in the 1920s) is still in operation.

World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson was once arrested here for marrying his White wife and transporting her across state lines. He was detained in Battle Creek, where he visited a former acquaintance, went for a sleigh ride and spent the night at the house of patrolman John Patterson, Battle Creek's first African American police officer. Federal authorities from Chicago took him into custody the next day.

The city was noted for its focus on health reform during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Battle Creek Sanitarium was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. In addition to some of his sometimes bizarre treatments that were featured in the movie The Road to Wellville, Kellogg also funded organizations that promoted eugenics theories at the core of their philosophical agenda, which was seen as a natural complement to euthenics. The Race Betterment Foundation was one of these organizations. He also supported the "separate but equal" philosophy and invited Booker T. Washington to speak at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in order to raise money. Washington was the author of the speech "The Atlanta Compromise", which solidified his position of being an accommodationist while providing a mechanism for southern Whites (and their sympathizers), to fund his school (the Tuskegee Institute).