William Roy Smith (1876–1938) was an American academic historian.

Career

Smith studied first at the University of Texas (A.B. 1897, A.M. 1898), and went on to complete a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1902, as a student of

William Archibald Dunning William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States. He founded the informal Dunning School of inter ...

. He joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr College in 1902, and became professor of history in 1914. He married Marion Parris on 11 June 1912 in Manhattan, New York. He died in

Bryn Mawr Hospital Bryn Mawr Hospital, part of Main Line Health, is a 264-bed acute care hospital located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1893, Bryn Mawr Hospital has been named among ''U.S. News & World Report’s'' Best Hospitals in the Philadelphia region ...

in February 1938. Smith's essay "Negro Suffrage in the South", published in ''Studies in Southern History and Politics'' (1914), argued that the disenfranchisement of Black voters had been necessary in the late 19th century, but looked forward to a time when "a steadily increasing number of negroes, who are qualified by intelligence and character, will be readmitted to the voting ranks". Smith's justifications for post-Reconstruction disenfranchisement led

W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...

to list him in ''

Black Reconstruction ''Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880'' is a history of the Reconstruction era by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in ...

'' (1935) among "authors hatbelieve the Negro to be sub-human and congenitally unfitted for citizenship and the suffrage".''Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880'' (Free Press, 1998), p. 731.

Publications

* "The Quarrel between Governor Smith and the Provisional Government of the Republic", ''Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association'' 5/4 (1902), pp. 269–346 * ''South Carolina as a Royal Province, 1710-1776'' (Macmillan, 1903) * "Negro Suffrage in the South", in ''Studies in Southern History and Politics Inscribed to William Archibald Dunning'' (Columbia University Press, 1914), pp. 229–256

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, William Roy 1876 births 1938 deaths University of Texas alumni Columbia University alumni Bryn Mawr College faculty