Wood Gray (March 19, 1905 - June 27, 1977) was a history professor at George Washington University, public speaker, and writer. He specialized in American social history and the history of the American Civil War. He was a consultant for the United States Information Agency working on histories and motion pictures for overseas distribution. He gave talks at the

Foreign Service Institute and Industrial College Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United S ...

. The George Washington University Libraries have a collection of his papers. He was born in Petersburg, Illinois, and graduated from Petersburg Harris High School as valedictorian and captain of the track team. He received a B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1927 and an M.A. in 1928. A student manager for the school's football team, he recounted taping Red Grange's ankles before the game against Michigan in which Grange scored five touchdowns. Gray earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1933. He began teaching history at George Washington University in 1934 and became department chair in 1937. He served in the Army Air Corps as a Special Staff Lt. Colonel from 1943 until 1946. In 1965 he was a member of NASA's historical advisory committee. He wrote about the Copperheads of the American Civil War era who he described as peace at any price Democrats.

Personal life

He married Dorothea Leal Gray (died 1978) on August 13, 1927. He died in Washington, D.C.

Bibliography

*''Historian's Handbook: A Key to the Study and Writing of History'' (1951) a textbook *''The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads'' (1942) *''Essays in American Historiography'', co-authored with

Marcus W. Jernegan Marcus Wilson Jernegan (1872–1949) was an American historian and a professor at the University of Chicago. In 2017, a scholar from Harvard (Donald Yacovone) referred to him as one of the leading historians of his time who influenced textbooks of ...

of (1937) *''The George Washington Key to Historical Research'' (1956) with William Columbus Davis et al.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gray, Wood 1905 births 1977 deaths People from Petersburg, Illinois Historians of the American Civil War NASA people University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni University of Chicago alumni George Washington University faculty Historians from Illinois