Jordan, Winthrop D. 1931-2007 (Winthrop Donaldson Jordan)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 11, 1931, in Worcester, MA; died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, February 23, 2007, in Oxford, MS. Historian, educator, and author. Jordan was renowned as a historian of race relations and the author of the groundbreaking White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (1968). He earned a B.A. in social relations from Harvard University in 1953, and then spent a year as a management trainee for an insurance company. Deciding this was not the right course for him, Jordan returned to school to study history. He completed a master's degree from Clark University in 1957, and a doctorate from Brown University in 1960. Having taught briefly at Phillips Exeter Academy and Brown University, he joined the College of William and Mary faculty in 1961. Jordan was a fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture there until 1963. Next, the University of California at Berkeley hired him as an assistant professor, and Jordan was a full professor of history from 1969 until 1982. He was also dean of minority affairs while at Berkeley. His last move was to the University of Mississippi, where he was profesor of history and Afro-American studies. He retired in 2003. Though he wrote, cowrote, and edited a number of history books over the years, Jordan will be best remembered for White over Black, which convincingly argued that racial attitudes are not intrinsic but rather evolve over time for numerous economic, religious, and social reasons. The work had a considerable influence on academic debate during and after the civil rights movement era, and it won the National Book Award and Bancroft Prize. Jordan was also the proud recipient of the B.L.C. Wailes Award in 2007, which was presented to him by the Mississippi Historical Association. Among his other books are The White Man's Burden (1974), the cowritten The American People: A History to 1877 (1986), and Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (1993).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2007, p. B9.

New York Times, March 8, 2007, p. C14.

Washington Post, March 13, 2007, p. B8.