David W. Blight Explained

David W. Blight
Birth Name:David William Blight
Birth Date:21 March 1949
Birth Place:Flint, Michigan, US
Thesis Title:Keeping Faith in Jubilee
Thesis Year:1985
Sub Discipline:American history

David William Blight (born 1949) is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for . In 2021, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[1]

Early life and education

Blight was born on March 21, 1949, in Flint, Michigan, where he grew up in a mobile home park. He attended Flint Central High School, from which he graduated in 1967.[2]

He then attended Michigan State University where he played for the Michigan State Spartans baseball team and graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. Blight taught at Flint Northern High School for seven years. He received his Master of Arts degree in American history from Michigan State in 1976 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the discipline from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985 with a dissertation titled Keeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War.[3]

Career

Following stints at North Central College (1982–1987) and Harvard University (1987–1989), Blight taught at Amherst College from 1990 to 2003. In 2001, he published Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. It "presented a new way of understanding the nation's collective response to the war, arguing that, in the interest of reunification, the country ignored the racist underpinnings of the war, leaving a legacy of racial conflict."[4] The book earned Blight both the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize.

After being hired by Yale in 2003 and teaching as a full professor, in 2006 Blight was selected to direct the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. His primary focus is on the American Civil War and how American society grappled with the war in its aftermath. His 2007 book A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation context for newly discovered first-person accounts by two African-American slaves who escaped during the Civil War and emancipated themselves.[5]

He also lectures for One Day University. In Spring 2008, Blight recorded a 27-lecture course, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877 for Open Yale Courses, which is available online.

Blight wrote , released in 2018, as the first major biography of Douglass in nearly three decades. One reviewer called it "the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass" and another heralded the book as "the new Frederick Douglass standard-bearer for years to come."[6] [7] It earned the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in history and the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.[8]

Contributing to the anthology Our American Story (2019), Blight addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He cited Frederick Douglass's 1867 speech titled "Composite Nation" calling for a "multi-ethnic, multi-racial 'nation' ... incorporated into this new vision of a 'composite' nationality, separating church and state, giving allegiance to a single new constitution, federalizing the Bill of Rights, and spreading liberty more broadly than any civilization had ever attempted". Blight concluded that although the search for a new unified American story would be difficult, "we must try".[9]

In July 2020, Blight was one of the 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter", published in Harper's Magazine and titled "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", which expressed concern that "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."[10]

Awards

Works

Books as author

Books as contributor

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: The American Philosophical Society Welcomes New Members for 2021.
  2. News: Taylor . Jordee . Pulitzer-Winning Biographer David Blight at National Writers Series . 11 September 2021 . Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine . MyNorth Media . 30 June 2020.
  3. David W. Blight. "Keeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War"
  4. http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/blight_d.html "David W. Blight"
  5. News: Grimes . William . Freedom Just Ahead: The War Within the Civil War . 11 September 2021 . New York Times . 5 December 2007.
  6. News: Glaude . Eddie . Complex look at Frederick Douglass with a lesson for Trump era . 6 March 2019 . Boston Globe . 12 October 2018.
  7. News: Claybourn . Joshua . Joshua Claybourn . A review of 'Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom' by David W. Blight . Compulsive Reader.
  8. Web site: David Blight Awarded the 2019 Lincoln Prize for "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom" . the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History . 6 March 2019.
  9. Book: Claybourn . Joshua . Joshua Claybourn . Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative . 2019 . Potomac Books . Lincoln, NE . 978-1640121706 . 3–18 .
  10. Web site: 2020-07-07 . A Letter on Justice and Open Debate Harper's Magazine . 2022-08-23 . Harper’s Magazine . en.
  11. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199 Race and Reunion and prizes
  12. http://www.yale.edu/glc/index.htm "David W. Blight Receives 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize"
  13. https://www.thelincolnforum.org/richard-nelson-current-award-of-achievement The Lincoln Forum
  14. Web site: New England Book Awards . New England Independent Booksellers Association . December 22, 2023 . December 22, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231222141109/https://newenglandbooks.org/page/book-awards . live.
  15. Web site: David Blight receives highest honor from American Academy of Arts and Letters. glc.yale.edu. March 25, 2020. November 25, 2020.
  16. Web site: Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement . www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.

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