C Vann Woodward

C. Vann Woodward (Comer Vann Woodward), 1908-99, American historian, b. Vanndale, Ark. He graduated from Emory Univ. (1930), received his Ph.D. in history from the Univ. of North Carolina (1937), and taught at several schools, most notably Johns Hopkins (1946-61) and Yale (1961-77). An outstanding historian of the American South and of race relations in the United States, he is noted for the graceful literary style that enhanced his superb scholarship in such works as Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (1938, repr. 1955), Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951), Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (1951, rev. ed. 1956), The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955, rev. ed. 1974), The Burden of Southern History (1960), and American Counterpoint (1971). He edited Mary Chestnut's Civil War (1981; Pulitzer Prize, 1982), The Oxford History of the United States (1982-99), and, with Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, The Private Mary Chestnut (1984).

Woodward, C[omer] Vann (1908–), premier historian of the American South, divided his career between Johns Hopkins (1946–61) and Yale (1961–77), where he was Sterling Professor of History. Woodward has concentrated on the American South since the Civil War. He established his reputation with Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938), and after an interval of service in World War II, Origins of the New South: 1877–1913 (1951), which had the then revisionist view that internal Southern conflicts rather than Northern carpetbaggers were at root of the long poverty of the region. Among his many titles are The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955) and Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History (1986). He is General Editor of the Oxford History of the United States (11 vols., 1982– ), and he edited Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981), which won a Pulitzer Prize. With Elisabeth Muhlenfeld he edited The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (1984).