Louis R. Harlan facts for kids

Louis Rudolph Harlan (born July 13, 1922 – died January 22, 2010) was an American historian. He is best known for writing a two-part biography about Booker T. Washington. Washington was an important African-American educator and social leader. Harlan also helped edit many of Washington's writings. He won the Bancroft Prize twice, once for each part of his biography. In 1984, he also won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for the second part of his work.

Louis Harlan's Early Life

Louis Harlan was born in Clay County, Mississippi. When he was three, his family moved to Decatur, Georgia. He studied history at Emory University. When World War II began, he joined the Navy. After getting his degree in 1943, he became an officer.

He served on a special boat that carried soldiers to shore. He was part of the D-Day Normandy Landings in France. This was a huge invasion by Allied forces during the war. He also took part in other invasions in southern France. After V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day), he was sent to the Pacific. He was preparing for a planned invasion of Japan.

In 1945, he left the Navy as a lieutenant. He then went back to studying history. He earned his master's degree at Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. At Johns Hopkins, he heard a talk by an African-American historian, John Hope Franklin. This inspired him to focus his studies on race relations in the Southern United States.

Studying Booker T. Washington

In 1958, Louis Harlan published his first book. It was called Separate and Unequal. This book looked at public schools and racism in the South in the early 1900s. This was during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.

After teaching at other colleges, he became a history professor at the University of Maryland in 1965. This location was helpful because it was close to many documents left by Booker T. Washington. For the next 20 years, Harlan worked on Washington's biography. He also edited Washington's papers with another historian, Raymond W. Smock. These papers were published in 14 volumes between 1972 and 1988.

Harlan's two-part biography of Washington was published 11 years apart. Scholars and historians praised his work. They said he was very good at explaining Washington's true personality. Harlan himself said that Washington's personality had "vanished into the roles it had played."

During his career, Louis R. Harlan also led important historical groups. He was president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. He retired in 1992. He spent his last years finishing his book about his experiences in the war. He passed away in Lexington, Virginia, at age 87.

Awards and Recognition

• 1984, Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Booker T. Washington, volume 2
• 1973 and 1984, Bancroft Prize, for Booker T. Washington, volumes 1 and 2
• Beveridge Award for his books about Booker T. Washington

Books and Writings

Essays

• "Sympathy and Detachment: Dilemmas of a Biographer." Conspectus of History 1.1 (1974): 29–36.

Memoir

• All at Sea: Coming of Age in World War II (1996)