Historian 'all-stars' honor Sheldon Hackney

On Sunday at Auburn University Montgomery, an “all-star lineup” of Southern historians gathered to talk, with topics ranging from the Civil War’s significance today to the historical poignancy of letters between a budding historian in civil rights-era Alabama and his mentor. The discussions all centered on stories about one man who affected the lives of every member of that distinguished panel — the late historian Sheldon Hackney.

The book “Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackney” (NewSouth Books, October 2013) collects the writings of 18 noted Southern historians. For this symposium, four of these prize-winning scholars — Raymond Arsenault, Orville Vernon Burton, Patrician Sullivan and Steven Hahn, came together to honor Hackney, who died in September 2013 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The symposium was a prelude to tonight’s Clifford and Virginia Durr Lecture, which will feature Hahn, whose book “A Nation under Our Feet” won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history.

Hackney, a Birmingham native, earned a doctorate at Yale University. He served as provost of Princeton University in the early 1970s before becoming president of Tulane University and the University of Pennsylvania. From 1993 to 1997, he was the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is also the late husband of Lucy Durr, daughter of civil rights pioneers Clifford and Virginia Foster Durr, for whom the annual lecture series is named.