Origins & Early Life

Comer Vann Woodward (November 13, 1908 – December 17, 1999) was an American historian who focused primarily on the American South and race relations. He was long a supporter of the approach of Charles A. Beard, stressing the influence of unseen economic motivations in politics. Woodward was on the left end of the history profession in the 1930s.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

By the 1950s he was a leading liberal and supporter of civil rights. His book The Strange Career of Jim Crow makes the case that racial segregation was an invention of the late 19th century rather than an inevitable post-Civil-War development. After attacks on him by the New Left in the late 1960s, he moved to the right politically. He won a Pulitzer Prize for History for his annotated edition of Mary Chestnut's Civil War diaries. C.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Vann Woodward was born in Vanndale, Arkansas, a town named after his mother's family and the county seat from 1886 to 1903. It was in Cross County in eastern Arkansas. Woodward attended high school in Morrilton, Arkansas. He attended Henderson-Brown College, a small Methodist school in Arkadelphia, for two years. In 1930, he transferred to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where...

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