C. Vann Woodward and the Civil Rights Movement
Sheldon Hackney, University of Pennsylvania
Overview
C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999) was perhaps the most admired historian in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Soft spoken, well dressed, and genteel, Woodward was nonetheless always to be found at the center of political action pushing leftward. He was a civil rights pioneer and an early opponent of the war in Vietnam. Nevertheless, in the late Sixties and after, he had major confrontations with radical left historians. University of Pennsylvania Historian Sheldon Hackney will discuss Woodward and his evolving relationship with the Civil Rights Movement.
Sheldon Hackney is the Boies Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania where he specializes in the history of the American South since the Civil War. His book Populism to Progressivism in Alabama received the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association.
Hackney earned his Ph.D. in American History from Yale University under the supervision of C. Vann Woodward. After beginning his academic career at Princeton, he went on to serve as the president of Tulane University and the University of Pennsylvania, and also as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Speaker
Christian F. Ostermann
Woodrow Wilson Center
Hosted By
History and Public Policy Program
The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs. Read more
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