She, Not He

In “Getting to Know Us” (February/March 1986), the Chinese historian Wenhui Hou mentions using as her American history text An Abridged History of the United States by Huang Shaoxiang, whom she identifies as China’s leading authority on American history. Perhaps it was a problem in translation, but your article had Professor Huang’s gender wrong She had been a guest at our schoo while collecting materials at the National Archives for a revised edition of her History of Early Development of America . A graduate student at Columbia University in the 1940s, Professor Huang was a pioneer in the study of American history in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Persecuted during the Cultural Revolution for her devotion to forbidden scholarship, she persevered and, in the more open environment of Deng Xiaoping’s China, became the first president of the American History Research Association of China. I enclose a photograph of this dedicated and courageous scholar taken recently at Monticello.