LaWanda Fenlason Cox (1909–2005) was a pioneering historian of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

and the period of

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

. Cox was born on September 24, 1909, in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. She attended Washington High School in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. Later, she received her Bachelors at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

in 1931, her masters from

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

(1934) and her Ph.D. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1941. Cox studied at Smith College with

Merle Curti Merle Eugene Curti (September 15, 1897 – March 9, 1996) was a leading American historian, who taught many graduate students at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in developing the fields of social history and ...

a social historian, and at Berkeley with John Schuster Taylor an economist. She was a member of the history faculty at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

and the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

's Graduate Center (and briefly, at

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland. It was chartered in 1885 by a conference in Baltimore led by namesake John F. Goucher and local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.https://archive.org/details/h ...

) from 1940, until her retirement from teaching in 1971. She remained an active historian until the loss of her sight, in 1989; she died on February 2, 2005, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Career

She was the author of several major works including, ''Politics, Principle, and Prejudice 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America'' (1963) which she wrote with her husband, John H. Cox; both shared the 1964 Dunning Prize for this work. She also wrote on her own: ''Reconstruction: The Negro, and the New South'' (1973), and also ''Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study of Presidential Leadership'' (1981).

Bibliography

* Cox, LaWanda. ''Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership.'' Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981. * Cox, LaWanda, and John H. ''Politics, Principle, and Prejudice'' ''1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America.'' New York: Free Press, 1963. * Cox, LaWanda. ''Reconstruction: The Negro, and the New South.'' Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973.

References

1909 births 2005 deaths American women academics Historians of the Reconstruction Era Hunter College faculty Smith College alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Oregon alumni American women historians Writers from Aberdeen, Washington Writers from New York (state) Historians of Abraham Lincoln {{US-historian-stub