Woodward, C. Vann

Woodward, C. Vann (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).

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