David Brion Davis facts for kids

Quick facts for kids David Brion Davis
Born	(1927-02-16)February 16, 1927 Denver, Colorado, U.S.
Died	April 14, 2019(2019-04-14) (aged 92) Guilford, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	Dartmouth College (AB) Harvard University (PhD)
Notable work	The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966) Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2006)
Spouse(s)	Toni Hahn Davis ​ (m. 1971)​
Parent(s)	Clyde Brion Davis Martha Elizabeth Wirt
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (1967) National Humanities Medal (2014)
Scientific career
Institutions	Cornell University Yale University
Doctoral students	Sean Wilentz

David Brion Davis (born February 16, 1927 – died April 14, 2019) was an American historian. He was a leading expert on slavery and the movement to end it, called abolition, in the Western world.

He was a top history professor at Yale University. He also started and led the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale.

Davis wrote or edited 17 books. His books often explored how people's beliefs and ideas were connected to their daily lives and political goals. He believed that ideas are like a lens through which people see the world. He also wrote often for The New York Review of Books.

He won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In 2014, President Barack Obama gave him the National Humanities Medal. This award was for "reshaping our understanding of history." He also received other major awards for his work, including the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

Davis taught at Cornell University for 14 years. Then, he taught at Yale from 1970 to 2001. He also held visiting positions at Oxford University and Stanford University.

Early Life and Education

David Brion Davis was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1927. His father, Clyde Brion Davis, was a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. His mother, Martha Elizabeth (Wirt) Davis, was an artist and writer.

Because of his parents' work, Davis moved around a lot as a child. He lived in California, Colorado, New York, and Washington State. He went to five different high schools in just four years.

In 1950, he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy from Dartmouth College. He then went on to earn his PhD from Harvard University in 1956.

During World War II, Davis joined the United States Army in June 1945. While traveling to France in 1945, he saw how black soldiers were treated unfairly. He was assigned to help with the occupation of Germany in 1945–46. Because he knew some German, he helped police civilians.

Davis's parents were not religious. He did not identify with any religion until he married Toni Hahn Davis, who is Jewish. In 1987, Davis began to convert to Judaism. He had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony in 2008.

His Work as a Historian

In 1968, David Brion Davis wrote an important essay. It was called "Some Recent Directions in American Cultural History." In it, he encouraged historians to pay more attention to culture. He believed this would help people better understand social issues and political decisions.

At that time, many historians focused on social history. Cultural history was often seen as just studying art or popular trends. But Davis wanted a history that looked at people's beliefs, values, fears, and hopes.

His 1979 book, Antebellum American Culture, looked at American culture before the Civil War. He argued that American culture was like an ongoing "moral civil war." Different groups of Americans debated what was happening in their country. They argued about what to fear and what to fight for.

He suggested that a small group of writers and reformers in the 1800s helped define middle-class rules. These rules were about education, good taste, gender roles, and moral behavior.

Studying Slavery

University of Maryland historian Ira Berlin said that "no scholar has played a larger role in expanding contemporary understanding of how slavery shaped the history of the United States, the Americas, and the world than David Brion Davis."

Davis helped people see slavery as a global issue, not just something that happened in one country. He looked at how slavery started, grew, and was ended across many nations.

His most important work is a three-book series about slavery in the Western world. This series showed how central slavery was to American and Atlantic history.

• The first book, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1966), won the Pulitzer Prize.
• The second was The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (1975).
• The third was The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (2014).

Davis believed that culture is always changing. It involves conflict, resistance, new ideas, and power. He thought that culture includes many different voices. But it also involves social relationships with power differences, unfair treatment, and people fighting back.

His Students

David Brion Davis taught many students over the years. He advised many students who went on to become award-winning historians themselves. Some of his notable students include Edward Ayers, Sean Wilentz, and John Stauffer.

His students honored him with two special books, called festschrifts. These books were Moral Problems in American Life (1998) and The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of Reform (2007).

Career Highlights

Here is a summary of David Brion Davis's career:

Teaching Positions

• Instructor, Dartmouth College, 1953-1954
• Professor, Cornell University, 1955-1969
• Professor, Yale University, 1969-2001
• Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University, 1998-2004

Major Awards

• Anisfield-Wolf Award, 1967
• Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, 1967 (for The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture)
• American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Award, 1975
• Bancroft Prize, 1976
• National Book Award in History and Biography, 1976 (for The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution)
• Society of American Historians Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement, 2004
• American Historical Association Scholarly Achievement Award, 2007
• Phi Beta Kappa Society Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, 2007
• National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, 2014
• National Book Critics Circle Award winner, 2015 (for The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation)
• Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2015

Fellowships and Honors

• Guggenheim Fellow, 1958-1959
• Fulbright grantee, 1980
• NEH fellow, 1983-1984
• Harmsworth Professor, Oxford University, 1969-1970
• President, Organization of American Historians, 1988-1989
• Honorary Degree, Dartmouth College, 1977
• Honorary Degree, Columbia University, 1999
• Honorary Degree, Harvard University, 2016
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow, American Philosophical Society
• Fellow (corr.), British Academy