C. Vann Woodward

Arkansas-born C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999), Sterling Professor of History at Yale, was the author of The Burden of Southern History and of Origins of the New South, which won the Bancroft prize. His book The Strange Career of Jim Crow, published by the Oxford University Press in 1955 is an excellent study of the history of segregation.

Woodward is considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by the general public.

Articles by this Author

Presidents: Most Under- and Overrated, July/August 1988 | Vol. 39, No. 5

Plessy v. Ferguson, April 1964 | Vol. 15, No. 3

The Birth of Jim Crow

The Lowest Ebb, April 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 3

Blamed for the misdeeds of others, President Grant left his name on America’s sorriest Administration

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