James Oliver Horton

1943–

Historian, educator

James Oliver Horton's diverse professional activities have made him one of the most important contemporary African-American historians. Horton brought new techniques to the study of African-American history and won recognition from his peers. Yet Horton, in an era when many academic historians have retreated from public view, has been a staunch advocate of public history—history for nonprofessional audiences. A compelling speaker with an affinity for the medium of television, Horton has helped shape the visions of American history presented by organizations such as Colonial Williamsburg and the Walt Disney Company. His commitment has benefited scholarly specialists and general readers alike.

Born on March 28, 1943, in Newark, New Jersey, James Oliver Horton was the son of Theoliver and Marjorie (Lindsey) Horton. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1964. Horton then joined the U.S. Air Force, serving for six years and rising to the rank of captain. During the final stages of his military service, he took courses at the University of Hawaii, from which he received an M.A. in 1970. Leaving the army, Horton entertained many career options but came to believe that he wouldn't thrive in a corporate environment. He enrolled in a Ph.D. program in history at Brandeis University neat Boston, Massachusetts.

Researched Lives of Black Bostonians

At the time, the field of American history was undergoing substantial change. Instead of recording the actions of leaders and compiling chronicles of significant events, historians began to pore over the nitty-gritty, everyday documents, such as tax records, business ledgers, and church membership rolls, that showed how ordinary people made a living and illuminated the challenges they faced. Horton, doing research for a class paper on the role of black Bostonians in the abolitionist movement, happened upon a treasure trove of documents that revealed intricate networks of social organization among the city's African-American citizens. He found records pertaining to unofficial, but vital, community institutions such as boarding houses and barbershops. He soon concentrated much of his efforts on interpreting these records.

Receiving his Ph.D. from Brandeis in 1973, Horton landed a job at the University of Michigan, where he taught history until 1977. He moved on to an associate professor position at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., as he completed his first book, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North. That book published in 1979, was written with his wife, Lois E. Horton, who collaborated on many of his writings. The two married in 1964 and raised a son. Lois Horton worked as a professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

The book, in the words of African American Review writer Gary B. Nash, "was the first scholarly study of a free black community based on the kinds of materials—tax records, manuscript tax returns, and the like—that have undergirded the explosion of social history in the last generation. Many other studies of free black communities have extended the Hortons' study, but all historians owe a debt, methodologically and conceptually, to their study of black Bostonians." Horton's focus on free black communities in the Northern states was also comparatively rare at the time, and his reputation grew. He began to give talks at other institutions and in 1988 and 1989 he served as Senior Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Munich, Germany. That was the first of several overseas stints for Horton, who later taught in the Netherlands and gave lectures around Europe and East Asia. He co-authored, with Lois E. Horton and Norbert Finzsch, a book in German about African-American history. Black Bostonians remained a widely read work in the field for many years and was reissued in a revised edition in 1999.

Advised Museums on Black History

Despite his growing prestige in academia, Horton developed an increasing desire to address nonacademic audiences with his work. Beginning in 1981, he served as director of the Afro-American Communities Projects at the National Museum of American History in Washington. That led to a series of other curatorial posts and consultancies, some of them devoted to showing slavery's often-hidden presence in a variety of American social institutions. Horton has been an historical advisor to the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and to Monticello, the Virginian estate of Thomas Jefferson.

One of Horton's posts proved controversial: although he had been critical in the past, he was retained as a consultant by the Walt Disney Company as it planned its massive (and eventually mothballed) Disney's America theme park in Haymarket, Virginia. A group of scholars called a press conference to criticize Horton and Columbia University professor Eric Foner for becoming involved with what they saw as Disney's escapist version of American history. But Horton defended his decision. "I know what kind of history Disney has done in the past," he told Sarah Skolnik of Regardie's Magazine. "Is there anything that would lead me to believe that without some advice—perhaps pressure—that the new theme park would be any better than that? Is there anything? We don't have a licensing procedure like medicine. So given that there is no way we can say to Disney, 'You cannot do history,' I don't want to throw my hands in the air and let them do whatever they want to do."

Horton was also active as a curator himself. With historian David Brion Davis he developed the traveling exhibit "Free at Last: A History of the Abolition of Slavery," which opened with showings in Cincinnati and New York in 1997 and toured the United States for the next seven years. Horton also compiled a CD-ROM version, Free at Last: The Virtual Exhibition. He began an association with the National Park Service as an advisory board member in 1993 and later took on the post of senior advisor on historical interpretation and public education.

At a Glance …

Born on March 28, 1943, in Newark, NJ; married Lois E. Horton, 1964; children: James Michael. Education: State University of New York at Buffalo, BA, 1964; University of Hawaii, MA, 1970; Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, PhD, 1973. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1964–70, captain.

Career: University of Michigan, assistant professor of history, 1973–77; George Washington University, associate professor, 1977–90, professor of history and American civilization, 1991–; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, director of Afro-American Communities Project, 1981–; visiting professor at numerous colleges and universities including recurring appointment at University of Hawaii; consultant to Colonial Williamsburg and many other museums and displays.

Selected memberships: American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians (president, 2004–05), Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, American Studies Association.

Selected awards: Pulitzer Prize nomination for In Hope of Liberty, 1997.

Addresses: Office—Department of History and American Studies, George Washington University, 2108 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20052.

Nominated for Pulitzer Prize

As his career developed, Horton's scholarly and public activities fed into one another. He expanded his research into Northern free black communities, publishing the essay collection Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community in 1993 and In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Protest, and Community Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 in 1997. The latter book, written with Lois E. Horton, earned a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In Hope of Liberty traced the diverse roles free blacks played in Northern communities and the ways in which they laid groundwork for the abolitionist movement. The book synthesized research pointing to the African roots of the Pinkster or Pentecost festivals held in black communities in the Northeast, but it also delved into the complex ways in which free blacks became integrated into white social structures even as they continued to suffer the effects of prejudice. Some African Americans, Horton showed, spoke immigrant languages such as German, Dutch, French, or Spanish, while others were active as sailors—an aspect of maritime history largely hidden until recent years.

Horton's Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America (2001) and Slavery and the Making of America (2004), both again written with his wife, were general histories that brought together a lifetime of experience in bringing history to the public. Material from both books turned up in Horton's frequent appearances on the History Channel and in his activities as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, to which he was appointed by President Bill Clinton after serving for several years as a historical adviser to Hillary Clinton. Slavery and the Making of America served as a companion volume to a Public Broadcasting Service documentary television series of 2005.

That book, wrote Patience Essah in the Journal of Southern History, "breaks no new historical ground, and scholars looking for an in-depth study of how slavery shaped America will not find answers here." Yet Essah praised the book, noting that "Readers interested in the more personal side of the slave story will find this a delightful book." Horton brought two strands of African-American history together in an accessible form: he used well-known narratives of slaves and enslaved Africans such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Olaudah Equiano to illustrate the key role slavery played in the growth of the American economy. "If you take slavery out of American history," he told National Public Radio host Tavis Smiley, "you don't have the nation that we have today."

By the early 2000s, Horton was a senior figure in his field. He had become president of the Organization of American Historians in 2004 and was serving as editor of a 12-volume Oxford University Press series, Landmarks of American History. His own contribution to the series described 13 locations with historical significance in African-American life, from the original slave debarkation point of Jamestown, Virginia, to the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, the site of a key student civil-rights protest I 1960. "Students are apt to come away from this text with some interesting facts that they are not likely to forget," noted School Library Journal in its review. The same might be said of Horton's entire career.

Selected works

(With Lois E. Horton) Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North, Holmes & Meyer, 1979 (rev. ed., 1999).
Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
(With Lois E. Horton) A History of the African American People,: The History, Traditions, and Culture of African Americans, Wayne State University Press, 1997.
(With Lois E. Horton) In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860, Oxford University Press, 1997.
(With Lois E. Horton and Norbert Finzsch) Von Benin nach Baltimore: Die Geschichte der African Americans (From Benin to Baltimore: The History of African Americans), Hamburger Edition, 1999.
(With Lois E. Horton) Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America, Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Landmarks of African American History, Oxford University Press, 2005.
(With Lois E. Horton) Slavery and the Making of America, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Sources

Periodicals

African American Review, Summer 1996, p. 285; Fall 1999, p. 523.

Journal of Southern History, February 2006, p. 175.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 2004, p. 52.

Regardie's Magazine, September-October 2004, p. 44.

School Library Journal, August 2005, p. 145; October 2005, p. S67.

Washington Post, March 9, 1994, p. A1; December 12, 2004, p. T3.

On-line

"James Horton," George Washington University, www.gwu.edu∼amst/community/faculty/core/horton.htm (July 21, 2006).

"Meet the Commission: Dr. James Oliver Horton," Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial 2009, www.lincolnbicentennial.gov/commission/meet/horton.php (July 21, 2006).

Other

Interview, The Tavis Smiley Program, National Public Radio, February 8, 2005.