Reginald D. Butler, former director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies and associate professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia, died July 5 in Charlottesville after a long illness. He was 74.

Butler studied the history of African American culture in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, but spent many summers with his grandparents in Goochland, Virginia.

He came to UVA in 1991, and became the second director of the Woodson Institute, especially supporting the study of local African American history using early digital technology.

Current Woodson Institute director Deborah McDowell, Alice Griffin Professor of English, who took the post a few years after Butler, said, “The Woodson Institute owes Reginald a debt of gratitude for his long years of service and leadership. He will be sorely missed, but his work and influence live on in the students he taught and mentored and whose lives he deeply touched.”