C. Vann Woodward is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. A native of Arkansas, he earned his under-graduate degree at Emory University. He holds M.A. degrees from Columbia University and Oxford University and the Ph.D. degree from the University of North Carolina. He has served as president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. He won the Bancroft Prize for this book in 1952 and the Sydnor Award for The Burden of Southern History in 1962. He was a recipient of the National Institute of Arts and Letters Literary Award in 1954. Among his other books are Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and Reunion and Reaction.