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Charles B. Dew

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Charles B. Dew (born 1937) is an American author and historian, specializing in the history of the Southern United States and the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era. He has published three books, one of which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.[1] He is the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College.[2]

Biography

Dew grew up in a white family in St. Petersburg, Florida, which he called "a Jim Crow town to the core". His family had an African-American help, who ate and drank from her own plate and cup, and who used a "grossly unequal" bathroom for her only.[3] In an essay he wrote on the occasion of the publication of The Making of a Racist, he commented that he hadn't crossed the Mason–Dixon line until he went to college in 1954, and that his experiences at Williams College — where he studied history (which "blew [his] assumptions about Confederate glory out of the water") and had black classmates — were formative for his developing a critique of what he termed "collective white blindness".[4] He graduated in 1958 and received his Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 1964.[2]

Dew is a descendant of Thomas Roderick Dew (1802–1846), who was a "passionate apologist" for slavery, and he writes about his family heritage in his 2016 book The Making of a Racist.[5] The book was the result of a self-examination which he said was prompted by his coming across a price list for slaves from 1860: "I thought, how could my white southern ancestors have been complicit in this?", to which the only answers are greed and the belief in white superiority, which Southern boys received "by osmosis".[1][6]

Dew was married to writer Robb Forman Dew until her death in 2020.

Bibliography

  1. Dew, Charles B (2016). The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813938875. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Critic Leonard Pitts was less than impressed with the answers that Dew provided for why he and his family remained racist for a long time, though he found his account of falling away from the racism of his family and region "compelling".[7]
  1. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia. 2001. Recipient of 2001 Fletcher Pratt Award, awarded by Civil War Roundtable
  2. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. New York: Norton. 1994. Notable Book of the Year for 1994 by The New York Times Book Review;[1] published as paperback in 1995.
  3. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. New Haven: Yale UP. 1966. Revised edition published by Library of Virginia, 1998.

References

  1. ^ a b c "Author confronts family's ties to slavery". Montgomery Advertiser. June 10, 2018. pp. 1D, 4D.
  2. ^ a b "Charles Dew". Williams College.
  3. ^ Dew 2016, p. 166. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFDew2016 (help)
  4. ^ Dew, Charles B. (October 16, 2016). "The Unmaking of a Racist". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  5. ^ Smith, John David (September 6, 2016). "Historian examines his past in The Making of a Racist". The News & Observer. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  6. ^ Dew 2016, pp. 36, 166. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFDew2016 (help)
  7. ^ Pitts, Leonard (September 2, 2016). "A white Southerner searches for the source of his family's racism". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
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