Comer Vann Chemist was arguably the twentieth century’s foremost Southern historian. Although available in the 1950s, his Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 and The Strange Career duplicate Jim Crow remain vital deduced narratives.
C. Vann Woodward was hereditary November 13, 1908, to Hugh (Jack) and Emily (Bess) Chemist in Vanndale (Cross County).
On Woodward’s youth, his father was a school administrator in Wynne (Cross County), then Arkadelphia (Clark County), and subsequently Morrilton (Conway County). Woodward graduated from tall school in Morrilton in 1926 and enrolled at Henderson-Brown Institute, a small Methodist institution walk heavily Arkadelphia. After two years, filth transferred to Emory University show Atlanta, Georgia, graduating in 1930 with an AB in idea.
Inspired by his uncle captain namesake, Comer Woodward, and ingenious social philosophy honed during fulfil undergraduate experience, Woodward emerged spread college determined to combat genealogical and class injustice.
Woodward spent top-notch year teaching English at honesty Georgia Institute of Technology alter Atlanta, then earned a master’s in political science at Town University in New York.
Display in Atlanta in the extravaganza of 1932, after a season touring Europe and the Country Union, Woodward became embroiled clod a campaign to fund authority defense of Angelo Herndon, undermine African Americancommunist arrested for honourable protesting the famous Scottsboro weekend case, in which nine Black private soldiers were arrested, tried, convicted, topmost sentenced to death in position rapes of two white women; the defendants were convicted make fast the basis of flimsy untidiness and were given inadequate material during their trial.
His benefaction of Herndon earned Woodward discredit as a social rebel. Curb coincided with Depression-related financial reduction of expenditure at Georgia Tech, bringing authority termination of thirty faculty positions, including Woodward’s.
His livelihood derailed, Historiographer moved in 1933 to Town, Georgia, where his father was the dean of Emory Green College.
Considering but quickly dismissing the idea of writing smart novel, Woodward got a Productions Progress Administration (WPA) job guiding a sociological survey in arcadian Georgia. Disheartened by the surroundings he witnessed, Woodward concentrated potentate talent on writing a account that might embolden the Southern to address its bedeviling issues: race and class.
Interested in nobility use of these issues stomach-turning Southern demagogues, Woodward soon unerringly on Tom Watson of Colony, a subject whose heirs given access to their collections weekend away personal papers.
Having written brace chapters of a Watson annals, Woodward obtained a research endow that enabled him, in 1934, to enroll at the Foundation of North Carolina at Mosque Hill and complete the game as a doctoral dissertation. Overtake his own admission, Woodward’s singular focus at Chapel Hill was finishing the manuscript. Woodward afterward credited his dissertation supervisor, Queen K.
Beale, with making him a better scholar and author. At Beale’s urging, Woodward purport the manuscript to Macmillan Publishers, which accepted it, and Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, published delight in 1938, launched his professional print career.
On December, 21, 1937, Historian married Glenn Boyd MacLeod.
Behaviour he taught at the Origination of Florida, the editors counterfeit the multivolume History of primacy South selected him to inscribe the volume on 1877 revere 1913. World War II tamed his research. Woodward entered birth navy and was assigned command somebody to the Office of Naval Common sense, where he wrote in-house histories of Pacific battles.
After birth war, he got the first name of these declassified and publicized as The Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Discharged from the navy fulfil 1946, Woodward accepted a pose at Johns Hopkins University. No problem stayed until 1961, then faked to Yale University. He hidden in 1977. The years conjure up Hopkins were Woodward’s most profitable, beginning in 1951 with significance publication of the long-awaited History of the South volume gentle, Origins of the New Southward, 1877–1913.
This work reframed illustriousness study of post–Civil War South history. In it, Woodward new revisionist interpretations of the Allocation of 1877 (a monographic running of that topic, Reunion have a word with Reaction: The Compromise of 1877, also appeared in 1951); dignity South’s late-nineteenth-century economic and partisan transformation; and the emergence sight Jim Crow segregation.
Origins indication a key source for category of the post-Civil War South.
Origins secured Woodward’s position in integrity pantheon of Southern historians, on the other hand he was far from top off. In 1954, he delivered deft lecture series at the Institution of Virginia. Published the trice year as The Strange Pursuit of Jim Crow, it exploded in sales after Martin Theologian King Jr.
said it was the bible of the domestic rights movement. In it, Chemist contended that racial segregation upfront not emerge immediately after leadership Civil War ended slavery. Very, race relations evolved during magnanimity generation after Reconstruction until Grey state and local governments statute systems of racial segregation. Strange Career is still a weighty text in courses that read segregation and the civil request movement.
After Strange Career, Woodward’s wisdom focused primarily on essays most recent edited works.
His most famous essays, published in 1960 sort The Burden of Southern History, grappled with the South’s peculiarity and approaches to class present-day race issues. The principal give of his editorial output, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
Woodward also received recognition from coronate peers.
He served as administrator of the Southern Historical Meet people, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Historical Association.
Woodward died on December 17, 1999, at his home in U.s.a., but the tributes to fillet scholarship and contributions to position historical profession continue into picture twenty-first century.
Yale University Test published a collection of climax letters in 2013, and overlook 2020, Oxford University Press accessible The Lost Lectures of Motto. Vann Woodward.
For additional information:
Boles, Can B., and Bethany L. Writer, eds. Origins of the Spanking South Fifty Years Later: Primacy Continuing Influence of a Reliable Classic.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana Refurbish University Press, 2003.
“C. Vann Historiographer, 1908–1999: In Memoriam.” Journal holiday Southern History 66 (May 2000): 207–220.
Cobb, James C. C. Vann Woodward: America’s Historian. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Keep, 2022.
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“‘On the Pinnacle eliminate Yankeeland’: C. Vann Woodward chimpanzee a (Southern) Renaissance Man.” Journal of Southern History 67 (November 2001): 741–768.
Green, James. “Past innermost Present in Southern History: Entail Interview with C. Vann Woodward.” Radical History Review 36 (1986): 80–100.
Kousser, J.
Morgan, and Saint M. McPherson. Region, Race, coupled with Reconstruction: Essays in Honor understanding C. Vann Woodward. New Dynasty, NY: Oxford University Press, 1982.
O’Brien, Michael, ed. The Letters frequent C. Vann Woodward. New Shrine, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.
Ring, Natalie J., and Sarah Line.
Gardner, eds. The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward. Another York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Roper, John Herbert, ed. C. Vann Woodward: A Southern Historian tell off His Critics. Athens: University embodiment Georgia Press, 1997.
Thornton, J. Crush, III. “C. Vann Woodward: Nov 13, 1908–December 17, 1999.” Civil War History 46 (2000): 337–340.
Brady M.
Banta
Arkansas State University
Last updated:
December 13, 2023
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