Elms and Magnolias: The 20th Century

Southern History at Yale

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934) b. in La Grange, Georgia, Professor of History
Historian of the American South best known for his pathbreaking use of archival materials for his research on the Antebellum South. He came to Yale in 1929 after publishing his classic text, Life and Labor in the Old South (1929), and taught here until his death in 1934. He was one of the great advocates of viewing the history of the South as one continuous line of events, unbroken by the Civil War and Emancipation. He saw racism as the central theme of the South's past and expressed this theory in his "Central Theme."

David M. Potter (1910-1971) b. in Augusta, Georgia, Professor of History, Ph.D. 1936
A prize student of Yale professor, Ulrich B. Phillips, Potter became one the most distinguished historians of America and the American South. He was a professor at Yale from 1942 until 1961. While at Yale he was appointed Coe Professor of History and was Editor of the Yale Review from 1949 to 1951. His "People of Plenty" thesis is perhaps his most enduring contribution to the study of American History. He put forth the theory that America's distinctiveness was derived from its abundant surplus.

C. Vann Woodward b. in Vanndale, Arkansas, Professor of History
Sterling Emeritus Professor of History C. Vann Woodward is the most acclaimed American historian of this century. He has received all the major prizes awarded to American historians. Among his many publications are the classic text for history of the New South, Origins of the New South (1951), the influential study of segregation, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955), and the Pulitzer Prize winning Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981). With his "Age of Reinterpretation" thesis he set loose a revolution in the study of American History. He called for a reinterpretation of history that not only destroyed prevailing misconceptions, but that expanded its perimeters to encompass many of the histories that had been ignored.

John A. Davis, N.A.A.C.P., to C. Vann Woodward, August 18, 1953
As demonstrated in this letter, Woodward was involved in the preparation of the brief for the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education. This historical support for the N.A.A.C.P.'s position on segregation later became The Strange Career of Jim Crow, the book that Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the Bible of the Civil Rights Movement."

C. Vann Woodward to Mrs. Arthur Betts, August 17, 1964
This letter marks the beginning of the project that would grow into Mary Chesnut's Civil War, for which Woodward received the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History.

John W. Blassingame b. in Social Circle, Georgia, Professor of History, Ph.D.1971

New Criticism

Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994) b. in Murray, Kentucky, Professor of English & Literary Critic
Brooks was the preeminent Southern literary critic and Yale literature professor whose scholarship helped formulate many of the ideas about American letters in this century. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt he became involved in the group of writers known as the Fugitives that later formed the literary school of New Criticism. Along with his classic work on Faulkner, and the The Well-Wrought Urn (1947), he and Robert Penn Warren published two influential textbooks in literary criticism, Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943).

Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) b. in Guthrie, Kentucky, Professor of English & Author
Warren is one of the most celebrated American writers of this century. He helped form the Fugitive movement at Vanderbilt, which gave rise to the school of literary criticism, the New Criticism. His founding of the Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks created a medium of expression for many of the emerging Southern writers. Warren is the only author to win a Pulitzer Prize for both prose and poetry, and was the first U.S. Poet Laureate. His other awards included the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize for poetry. His Pulitzer Prize winning novel All the King's Men (1946) is an American classic.