I have just learned the sad news that Sheldon Hackney passed away last Thursday. He was a professor of history at Princeton and later in life president of the University of Pennsylvania, head of the NEH, and finally returned to Penn in the history department. Hackney was a specialist in the history of the post-war south. He was from Montgomery.
I'm real sorry to hear this news; he was a really nice man, a serious scholar and, as this obituary from the Daily Pennsylvania points out, he did a lot to revitalize Penn at a difficult time in its history and in the history of the city of Philadelphia. Every time I visit Dan Filler I am always astonished and impressed by how much Penn has changed over the more than 25 years since I left there.
While most will remember him as the president who laid the groundwork for Penn's extraordinary strenghts I will remember him for Populism to Progressivism in Alabama, 1890-1910 (Princeton University Press, 1969). When I have a little more time I'd like to have a few other reflections down the road on what Hackney meant for scholarship on the south and what it meant to have someone from Alabama writing a progressive history of the difficult years of Jim Crow. I'm feeling particularly that way because of the recent controversy over the integration of the greek system at Alabama. Cully Clark's fabulous book about Governor Wallace's stand in the school house door was subtitled, "Segration's last stand at the University of Alabama." But I think this is.
The image is of the Furness Building at Penn.
I imagine that Dr. Hackney would be glad that the importance of his Alabama roots figured in your post. Once, praising another historian’s Pulitzer Prize winning work on Civil Rights, he told his sister in law that the breadth of the research was impeccable–the work could have been improved only if the writer had been born in Alabama.
As far as segregation seeing the last stand in Alabama (or elsewhere) it is sobering to think that Rosa Parks almost attended Dr. Hackney’s wedding. She was a friend of his wife’s parents (Cliff and Virginia Durr) and had altered the wedding dress. Not long before the ceremony, the minister refused to officiate unless Mrs. Parks somehow acted according to “her station” and either dressed like a servant or stayed in a separate section of the church. The problem was never resolved and Mrs. Parks apparently decided to stay away to avoid the disruption, press attention, or both.
I doubt that the Greeks have made the last stand for segregation—even if it was just for racial segregation— but it would be nice to think that it was the penultimate one.
Thanks for this, CM — I didn't know any of those stories about Hackney. I agree that there's something about having spent a lot of time in the south that improves the focus of southern history. (I can't speak to the having been born in the south part of this, but I could see how that might very well be true.) There is the potential problem of too much fondness for a subject bending our perspective — but being a part of (or at least immersed in) a culture is a huge benefit in studying it. And historians from the south can speak in terms and with nuance that can be heard by their audience.
As to the Alabama sorority story: I predicted a week ago that whatever alumnae stood in the way of integration would be unceremoniously tossed off the boards of their sororities (or find that their work and/or family obligations prevented them from continuing on the board) and that next year we'd see progress on this. I'm glad to see that at least as to the progress part of this I was off by 11 months and 3 weeks. What's not clear to me — and I very much hope that the Crimson White will continue its coverage of this — is just how many people stood in the sorority door (so to speak). Some of the reporting I've seen suggests it was less than a handful. I like to think that was the case.
I am grateful for every ray of sunshine and so am of course heartened by recent events in Tuscaloosa. I want to hear the story of how the administration fit into this picture and whether they were — as I hope — leading the push or were simply responding once it became clear that no one in power in the state supported the status quo.