What book did C. Vann Woodward publish that influenced the civil rights movement?

His most influential book appeared in 1955 under the title The Strange Career of Jim Crow which argued that racial segregation emerged as a relatively late development during the late nineteenth century.

Why did C. Vann Woodward oppose multiculturalism and political correctness by the 1970s?

By the 1970s C. Vann Woodward grew troubled by the rise of the black power movement and became a strong opponent of multiculturalism and political correctness according to editor Michael O'Brien.

For what work did C. Vann Woodward win the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1982?

C. Vann Woodward won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1982 for Mary Chesnut's Civil War which was an edited version of Mary Chesnut's Civil War diary.

C. Vann Woodward: the story on HearLore

Q: When and where was C. Vann Woodward born?

C. Vann Woodward entered the world on the 13th of November 1908 in Vanndale, Arkansas.

Comer Vann Woodward entered the world on the 13th of November 1908 in Vanndale, Arkansas. This small town served as the county seat from 1886 until 1903 and bore his mother's family name. He grew up in Cross County within eastern Arkansas before attending high school in Morrilton. His early academic path led him to Henderson-Brown College, a modest Methodist institution located in Arkadelphia. He spent two years there before transferring to Emory University in Atlanta during 1930. An uncle held the position of dean of students at that university while also teaching sociology. After earning his degree, he taught English composition for two years at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. It was during this period that he met Will W. Alexander who headed the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. He also encountered J. Saunders Redding, a historian based at Atlanta University.

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Woodward began his career aligned with left-wing political movements and sought to use history to explore dissent. He approached W. E. B. Du Bois about writing a biography but instead chose Georgia politician Tom Watson. Watson had been a populist leader in the 1890s focusing anger against banks railroads and businessmen. By 1908 Watson became the presidential candidate of the Populist Party yet turned against black voters. Woodward published his dissertation as a book titled Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel in 1938. The work examined how Watson mobilized hatred among poor whites against blacks. This project reflected his interest in economic motivations behind politics rather than abstract ideology. Howard K. Beale served as his dissertation director and promoted the Beardian interpretation of history. Beale emphasized material self-interest over ideas as the primary driver of historical change. Woodward received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1937 using this manuscript.

His most influential book appeared in 1955 under the title The Strange Career of Jim Crow. It argued that racial segregation was not an inevitable result following the Civil War. Instead it emerged as a relatively late development during the late nineteenth century. Woodward delivered the Richards Lectures at the University of Virginia in spring 1954 before publication. The text reached a broad audience and helped shape the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He claimed that after the Compromise of 1877 informal practices existed alongside forgotten alternatives into the 1880s. By the 1890s white southerners capitulated to racism to create legally prescribed state-wide Jim Crowism. Popular myth claims Martin Luther King Jr. called the work the historical Bible of the Civil Rights Movement. King actually cited the book in a speech at Montgomery Alabama on the 23rd of March 1956. He stated that segregation proved itself to be a political stratagem rather than a natural state of American society.

Woodward taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1946 until 1961 before moving to Yale. He became Sterling Professor of History at Yale where he served until 1977. At Yale he directed twenty-five PhD dissertations including those by John W. Blassingame and James M. McPherson. McPherson later became Professor of History at Princeton University while Blassingame chaired African American studies at Yale. Other students included J. Morgan Kousser who taught at California Institute of Technology. Patricia Nelson Limerick went on to teach at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Steven Hahn became Professor of History at New York University and Barbara Fields taught at Columbia University. Woodward wrote essays for outlets like the New York Review of Books but conducted little original research there. He also served as president of the American Historical Association during 1969. In April 1974 he responded to an inquiry from John Doar regarding presidential misconduct after Watergate. Woodward and fourteen other historians submitted a four hundred page report titled Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct in late June.

By the 1970s Woodward grew troubled by the rise of the black power movement. He disliked affirmative action and never fully came to grips with feminism or what became known as theory. He became a strong opponent of multiculturalism and political correctness according to editor Michael O'Brien. In 1969 he led the fight to defeat a proposal by New Left historians to politicize his organization. He wrote to his daughter that preparations paid off and he had second-guessed radicals on every turn. During 1975, 76 he led an unsuccessful effort at Yale to block Herbert Aptheker from teaching a course. Radicals denounced his actions yet a joint committee exonerated the process finding no evidence of political criteria. In 1987 he joined conservative scholars who formed the National Association of Scholars. This group explicitly opposed the academic left. Woodward wrote a favorable review in the New York Review of Books for Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus.

Woodward won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1982 for Mary Chesnut's Civil War. This work was an edited version of Mary Chesnut's Civil War diary. He also received the Bancroft Prize for Origins of the New South published in 1951. The National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture in 1978. His lecture entitled The European Vision of America later became part of his book The Old World's New World. He died on the 17th of December 1999 in Hamden Connecticut at the age of ninety-one. The Southern Historical Association established the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize awarded annually to the best dissertation on Southern history. A Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Chair of History exists at Yale now held by Glenda Gilmore. Peter was Woodward's son who died at age twenty-six in 1969. Woodward cautioned that academicians had abdicated their role as storytellers in favor of analytical urges.

C. Vann Woodward.

The Populist Turn

The Populist Turn

Jim Crow Invented

Yale And Mentors

The Rightward Shift

Honors And Legacy

Jim Crow Invented

Yale And Mentors

The Rightward Shift

Honors And Legacy

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Common questions

C. Vann Woodward.

1. The Populist Turn

1. The Populist Turn

2. Jim Crow Invented

3. Yale And Mentors

4. The Rightward Shift

5. Honors And Legacy

2. Jim Crow Invented

3. Yale And Mentors

4. The Rightward Shift

5. Honors And Legacy

Continue Browsing

Common questions

The Populist Turn

The Populist Turn

Jim Crow Invented

Yale And Mentors

The Rightward Shift

Honors And Legacy

Jim Crow Invented

Yale And Mentors

The Rightward Shift

Honors And Legacy