born Nov. 13, 1908, Vanndale, Ark., U.S.
died Dec. 17, 1999, Hamden, Conn.
U.S. historian.
He graduated from Emory University in 1930 and received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. His writings on the American South and the Civil War, including The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955) and The Burden of Southern History (1961), transformed the nation's understanding of the region. He edited Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981, Pulitzer Prize) and The Oxford History of the United States. At his death he was professor emeritus at Yale University.