Horton, James O. 1943-
(James Oliver Horton)

Personal

Born March 28, 1943, in Newark, NJ; son of Theoliver and Marjorie (Lindsey) Horton; married Lois Elaine Berry (a college professor), March 6, 1964; children: Michael James. Education: State University of New York—Buffalo, B.A., 1964; University of Hawaii—Manoa, M.A., 1970; Brandeis University, Ph.D., 1973.

Addresses

Home—2355 Old Trail Dr., Reston, VA 22091. Office—Department of History and American Studies, George Washington University, 2108 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20052. E-mail—horton@gwu.edu.

Career

Historian and educator. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, assistant professor of history, 1973–77; George Washington University, Washington, DC, associate professor, 1977–90, professor of history and American civilization, 1991—, currently Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History. Smithsonian Institution, director of Afro-American Communities Project at National Museum of American History, 1981—. University of Munich, senior Fulbright professor, 1988–89; lecturer at other institutions, including University of Colorado; also lecturer in Europe, Thailand, and Japan. Co-curator of traveling exhibit "Free at Last: A History of the Abolition of Slavery in America," for Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2002. National Park System, member of advisory board, beginning 1993, board chair, 1996; National Park Service, senior advisor on historical interpretation and public education, 1994–95; historical advisor to museums, including Underground Railroad Freedom Center, National Civil Rights Museum, and Colonial Williamsburg. Guest on media programs airing on Public Broadcasting Service and History Channel; consultant to films. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1964–70; became captain.

Member

American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, American Studies Association.

Awards, Honors

Grants from Smithsonian Institution, 1981–85, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1981–86; Trachtenberg Distinguished Teaching Award, George Washington University, 1994; named CASE Professor of the Year for the District of Columbia, Carnegie Foundation, 1996; Pulitzer Prize nomination in history category, c. 1997, for In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860; Distinguished Alumni Award, State University of New York—Buffalo, 2002.

Writings

(With wife, Lois E. Horton) Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North, Holmes & Meier (New York, NY), 1979, revised edition, 1999.

Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1991.

(Consulting editor, with Lois E. Horton) A History of the African-American People: The History, Traditions, and Culture of African Americans, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

(With Lois E. Horton) In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860, Oxford University Press (New York, NY, 1997.

(With Lois E. Horton and Norbert Finzsch) Von Benin nach Baltimore: die Geschichte der African Americans, Hamburger Edition (Hamburg, Germany), 1999.

(With Lois E. Horton) Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 2001.

Landmarks of African-American History, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(Author of introduction) Frederick Douglass and "The Progress of American Liberty": A Manuscript from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Lois E. Horton) Slavery and the Making of America, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Lois E. Horton) Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory, Norton (New York, NY), 2006.

Coeditor of pilot series "City of Magnificent Intentions" (social history of Washington, DC), 1983; editor of "Landmarks of American History" series, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000–02. Contributor to books, including People on the Move: Migration, Acculturation, and Ethnic Interaction in Europe and North America, by Dirk Hoerder, Berg Publishers (Providence, RI), 1993.

Sidelights

James O. Horton once commented: "My interest in and study of American social history is motivated by the belief that an understanding of the pluralistic nature of American society is the surest route to an appreciation of the multiple experiences which served to comprise the national history. The fact that Americans have not shared equally in the ‘American dream’ is a fact currently understood by most historians. We must now broaden our knowledge of the ways people, oppressed by American attitudes toward race, ethnicity, gender, or economic class, organized themselves to deal with barriers erected to their progress. The story of those who would not be defeated by prejudice and hostility is a tribute to the strength and tenacity of the American spirit.

"The choice of Boston as the setting of my first book was in part a practical one since I was a graduate student at Brandeis University, just outside the city, at the time of my research. It was also influenced by questions raised during my research for a graduate seminar paper on the role of blacks in the abolition movement. I was impressed at the extensive organization evident in antebellum black urban society. The discovery of such highly structured nineteenth-century community life was significant in 1970, a time when much of American social policy was shaped by the notion of general disorganization among urban blacks. Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North grew out of the discovery and the concern that scholars were generally not aware of the importance of informal community institutions, like barbershops and boarding housings, or did not regard them as legitimate examples of black organizational structure. My research pictured black Boston in the pre-Civil War years as politically active and highly structured.

"The research for my more-general study produced data which suggest that black Boston was not unique among northern black communities of the period. Not only was there similar organizational structure in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Chicago, and other northern cities, but there was interregional organization which linked blacks in a national community."

Horton added more recently: "My book of essays, Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community, is an attempt to discuss important issues of unity and conflict within the nineteenth-century African-American community. It focuses on shade of color, gender, class, leadership, questions of racial and national identity, and the important links between free black people and those held in slavery before the Civil War. I see this as a logical next step in [the] effort to study community life among nineteenth-century free African Americans. I began by trying to understand the formation and the existence of that community. Now I am attempting to understand the extent and the significance of diversity within that community."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

African-American Review, summer, 1996, Gary B. Nash, review of Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community, p. 285; fall, 1999, Peter H. Wood, review of In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, p. 523; summer–fall, 2003, Joe W. Trotter, review of Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America, p. 429.

American Historical Review, October, 1994, Leonard P. Curry, review of Free People of Color, p. 1401.

American Quarterly, June, 1999, Elizabeth Mchenry, review of In Hope of Liberty, p. 437.

Booklist, December 15, 2000, Lillian Lewis, review of Hard Road to Freedom, p. 782.

Choice, July–August, 2001, D.R. Jamieson, review of Hard Road to Freedom, p. 2022.

Journal of American History, September, 1994, Shane White, review of Free People of Color, p. 701; March, 1998, review of In Hope of Liberty, p. 1499.

Journal of Social History, fall, 1994, Keith Edgerton, review of Free People of Color, p. 218.

Journal of Southern History, November, 1994, Julie Winch, review of Free People of Color, p. 803.

Journal of the Early Republic, fall, 1998, James Brewer Stewart, review of In Hope of Liberty, p. 569.

New York Times Book Review, September 2, 2001, Nia- Malika Henderson, review of Hard Road to Freedom, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, review of Free People of Color, p. 72.

Reviews in American History, March, 1994, William L. Van Deburg, review of Free People of Color, p. 56; December, 1997, Wilson J. Moses, review of In Hope of Liberty, p. 557.

ONLINE

History Matters Web site,http://historymatters.gmu.edu/ (September 10, 2006), Roy Rosenzweig, interview with Horton.

UB Today Online (University of Buffalo), http://www.buffalo.edu/ (September 10, 2006), biography of James O. Horton.