C. Vann Woodward

America's Historian

James C. Cobb

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781469696164
  9781469670218
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469670225
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

With an epic career that spanned two-thirds of the twentieth century, C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of singular importance. A brilliant writer, his work captivated both academic and public audiences. He also figured prominently in the major intellectual conflicts between left and right during the last half of the twentieth century, although his unwavering commitment to free speech and racial integration that affirmed his liberalism in the 1950s struck some as emblematic of his growing conservatism by the 1990s. Woodward’s vision still permeates our understandings of the American South and of the history of race relations in the United States. Indeed, as this fresh and revealing biography shows, he displayed a rare genius and enthusiasm for crafting lessons from the past that seemed directly applicable to the concerns of the present—a practice that more than once cast doubt on his scholarship.

James C. Cobb offers many original insights into Woodward’s early years and private life, his long career, and his almost mythic public persona. In a time where the study and substance of American history are profoundly contested, Woodward’s career is replete with lessons in how myths about the past, some created by historians themselves, come to be enshrined as historical truth.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface & Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Legendary Historian
• 1. Another Mark Twain If He Applied Himself: The Superintendent’s Son Spreads His Wings
• 2. A Southern Historian I Must Be—Or Somehow Become: A Budding Biographer Makes Hard Choices
• 3. History, I Find, Is a Collection of Facts: Pursuing the “Cursed Degree” in Chapel Hill
• 4. A Better Read Than Huxley’s New Novel: Telling the Tom Watson Story
• 5. A Chance to Have My Say about the Period: The Origins of Origins
• 6. Juleps for the Few and Pellagra for the Crew: Reckoning with the Redeemer–New South Legacy
• 7. Cordially Invited to Be Absent: Integrating the Southern Historical Association
• 8. A Fundamental Attack upon the Prevailing View: Launching The Strange Career of Jim Crow
• 9. Wrong in All Its Major Parts: Strange Career Returns to Earth
• 10. A Basis for Criticizing the American Legend: Southern History as Both Asset and Burden
• 11. Tortured for Months: The Agony of Moving to Yale
• 12. Therapist of the Public Mind: The Strange Career of C. Vann Woodward
• 13. I Mean to Do All I Can: The Mentor Flexes His Muscles
• 14. An Ever More Conservative Old Liberal: Moving to the Right or Standing Fast?
• 15. I Do Not See How I Could Have Been Misunderstood: Sorting Out the Aptheker Debacle
• 16. The Masterpiece That Became a Hoax (and Won a Pulitzer): Rewriting Mary Chesnut’s Diary
• 17. Still More That I Can Do: The Satisfactions of Staying the Course
• Conclusion: America’s Historian
• Notes
• Index