C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999) was perhaps the most admired historian in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Soft spoken, well dressed, and genteel, Woodward was nonetheless always to be found at the center of political action pushing leftward. He was a civil rights pioneer and an early opponent of the war in Vietnam. Nevertheless, in the late Sixties and after, he had major confrontations with radical left historians. University of Pennsylvania Historian Sheldon Hackney will discuss Woodward and his evolving relationship with the Civil Rights Movement.

Sheldon Hackney is the Boies Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania where he specializes in the history of the American South since the Civil War. His book Populism to Progressivism in Alabama received the Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association.

Hackney earned his Ph.D. in American History from Yale University under the supervision of C. Vann Woodward. After beginning his academic career at Princeton, he went on to serve as the president of Tulane University and the University of Pennsylvania, and also as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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