C. Vann Woodward

Lore & Background

C. Vann Woodward was born in Vanndale, Arkansas, a town named after his mother's family. He attended Henderson-Brown College, transferred to Emory University, and later earned an M.A. from Columbia University in 1932. In New York, he met and was influenced by W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and other figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He worked for the defense of Angelo Herndon, a young African-American Communist Party member, and traveled to the Soviet Union and Germany in 1932. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina in 1937, with a dissertation on Thomas E. Watson directed by Howard K. Beale, a Reconstruction specialist who promoted the Beardian economic interpretation of history.

Woodward taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1946 to 1961 and became Sterling Professor of History at Yale from 1961 to 1977. His most influential book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955), explained that segregation was a relatively late development and not inevitable. Martin Luther King Jr. cited the book and averred that it proved racial segregation was 'a political stratagem,' not a natural state of American society. Woodward also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for his annotated edition of Mary Chesnut's Civil War diaries.

By the late 1960s, after attacks by the New Left, Woodward moved to the right politically. In 1969, as president of the American Historical Association, he led the fight to defeat a proposal by New Left historians to politicize the organization. In 1975–76 he led the unsuccessful fight at Yale to block the temporary appointment of communist historian Herbert Aptheker. He later joined the conservative National Association of Scholars and wrote a favorable review of Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education.

Reader's Guide

Woodward's significance lies in his reinterpretation of Southern history, particularly his argument in The Strange Career of Jim Crow that racial segregation was a late 19th-century invention, not an inevitable outcome of Reconstruction. This work provided historical support for the civil rights movement and reached a large popular audience. His Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 combined Beardian economic analysis with a tragic tone, rejecting both Lost Cause romanticism and New South boosterism. Woodward's career reflected a political trajectory from the left in the 1930s to a leading liberal in the 1950s, then a move to the right after conflicts with the New Left. He mentored numerous prominent historians, including John W. Blassingame, James M. McPherson, and Barbara Fields. His 1974 report on presidential misconduct, requested during the Watergate scandal, contributed to the impeachment process against Richard Nixon. Woodward's legacy includes both his scholarly influence and his later conservative turn, which sparked debate about the role of politics in academic history.

Did You Know?

• Woodward was born in Vanndale, Arkansas, a town named after his mother's family.
• He worked for the defense of Angelo Herndon, a young African-American Communist Party member accused of subversive activities.
• Martin Luther King Jr. cited The Strange Career of Jim Crow, stating it proved racial segregation was 'a political stratagem.'
• In 1974, Woodward and fourteen other historians submitted a 400-page report on presidential misconduct to inform the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.