The Passing of a Legend

It’s a sad day for the Ole Miss family. Dr. Jordan’s work of course speaks for itself but personally, he was one of the kindest souls I have ever had the opportunity to meet. Heaven will only be bettered by his presence.


UM Mourns Death of Renowned Historian Winthrop Jordan

OXFORD, Miss. Winthrop Jordan, 75, professor emeritus of history and African-American studies at the University of Mississippi, died at his home Friday (Feb. 23) after a long illness. He was a Quaker and a member of the Oxford Friends meeting.

Jordan won four national prizes in 1968-69 for his book "White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550-1812," including the Society of American Historians' Parkman Prize, Columbia University's Bancroft Prize, Phi Beta Kappa's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award and the National Book Award for History and Biography.

As part of its 50th anniversary, American Heritage magazine ranked "White Over Black" as the second-best book of all time in African American history, second only to W.E.B. DuBois' "Souls of the Black Folk."

"This book helped lead a revolution in the understanding of how slavery became an accepted part of early American life," said Robert Haws, who chaired the university's history department from 1986 to 2007. "It forever changed our understanding of the roots of racism in the United States."

Jordan received several awards, including another Bancroft Prize, for his "Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry Into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy" (1993). He was slated to receive the B.L.C. Wailes Award from the Mississippi Historical Society March 3 in Jackson. "Through the years, no faculty person has achieved greater distinction at Ole Miss than Winthrop Jordan," said Chancellor Robert Khayat. "Historians across the world are aware of his work, his colleagues respected him without reservation and he was much admired by his students. Although we have lost him, his legacy lives on."

Born in 1931 in Worcester, Mass., Jordan received his bachelor's degree in social relations from Harvard College in 1953, master's degree in history from Clark University in 1957 and doctoral degree in history from Brown University in 1960.

Jordan began teaching in 1955 as a history instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy before joining the faculty at the University of California-Berkeley, where he served from 1963 to 1982. He also served as associate dean for minority group affairs in the UC-Berkeley graduate school.

Jordan joined the UM faculty in 1982. He became the first holder of the William F. Winter Professorship of History in 1993 and retired in 2003. Haws called Jordan "the most distinguished faculty member ever" in the university's history department. "Before he had turned 40, his scholarship had defined the entire field of general race relations and set the scholarly agenda for the study of race in American history for two generations of scholars," Haws said

Jordan's numerous awards include fellowships from the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Guggenheim Foundation, Social Science Research Council and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences. He also received a Distinguished Alumnus Citation from Brown University.

Jordan is survived by his wife, Cora; three sons, Joshua Jordan of Davis, Calif., Mott Jordan of Santa Cruz, Calif., and Eliot Jordan of Berkeley, Calif.; three step-children; his former wife, Phyllis Jordan of Berkeley, Calif.; five grandchildren and five step-grandchildren.
Hodges Funeral Home in Oxford is handling arrangements. A campus memorial is being
planned.