Numan Bartley, Rest in Peace

by Cliopatria

I hate that my first post of the New Year brings sad news just as I hate that one of my final pieces of the year just past brought the news of Warren Gardner's passing. Nonetheless, Numan Bartley, the distinguished professor of Southern history at the University of Georgia, has passed away.

Here is a small obituary (I will assume that many more will come) from James Cobb, one of Bartley's colleagues in Athens and himself one of the finest practicing historians of the South (courtesy of H-South):

Numan V. Bartley 1934-2004
Dr. Numan V.,"Bud" Bartley, E. Merton Coulter Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Georgia, died at his home in Athens, Georgia on December 27. A native of Ladonia, Texas, Bartley received his B.A. degree from East Texas State Teachers College, his M.A. at North Texas State University, and his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. He taught at Georgia Tech before joining the faculty at the University of Georgia in 1971. The author or co-author of six books, Bartley was recognized as the leading authority on the history of southern politics since World War II. He was a recipient of the State of Georgia's Governor's Award in the Humanities and was a past president of the Southern Historical Association. An avid bridge player and consummate college football fan, Bud Bartley leaves a host of admiring and appreciative former students who benefited greatly from his generosity and openness to them and his dedication to thoughtful and penetrating analysis both in the classroom and in his enormously influential books and articles. His wife, Morraine Matthews Bartley, passed away in 1998.

Many will know Bartley best from his The New South, 1945-1980, which is the last book in the esteemed LSU Southern History series, whose previous volumes included books by Merton Coulter, Charles Sydnor, George Tindall, and a guy with a surname of Woodward. The Woodward and Tindall books are the ones that have most endured historiographically, of course, and Bartley's fits in well with their contributions.

My own work benefited most from Bartley's classic The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s. Reissued in paperback but with few changes from its original 1969 incarnation (namely a new preface), The Rise of Massive Resistance is still the standard for those of us who focus on the white opposition to black civil rights in the postwar era. One of the most fruitful areas of research in Southern history right now is massive resistance, broadly defined, and Bartley's book is thus a starting point for some of the most engaging current (and future) scholarship.

Those of us still new to the profession periodically need to stop and pay homage to those who blazed the trails before us. I just missed meeting C. Vann Woodward by a few hours when there was a tribute to him at the Southern in Birmingham a few years ago. Jeff Woods and I made the madcap drive from Athens, Ohio to the Magic City, but could not make the fete. Of course Woodward died some months later. Ever since I have made it a point to seek out those whose work has meant so much to me, to touch the hem of the garment and perhaps share a few words. I was able to do so with Bartley a couple of years back. I am glad that I did. The profession has lost one of the great ones.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Richard Henry Morgan - 1/4/2005

I too think Vandy started to turn the corner in the history department. Yet, I don't think it's up to the standard it set with Marchant, Herwig, Delzell, Conkin, Grantham, and Leffler -- if only because it has a smaller proportion of senior people now.

Race relations at Vandy still carry some baggage though. Vandy in the late '60's and early '70's twisted arms and had the Nashville government condemn surrounding property and evict inhabitants (many minorities), and then turn it over to Vandy. And then not too long ago Vandy gave George Peabody the cold shoulder when Peabody fell on hard times and wanted a rescuer. Then when TSU stepped in to take over Peabody, Vandy couldn't pay a high enough price for Peabody. Hmm. True, Vandy does have a strong minority scholarship program, but it has a lot to make up for.

It must have been an interesting time (in the Chinese sense) when Bartley was there doing his dissertation.
The only student disturbance at Vandy at that time was when a Trotskyite group, the Young Socialist Alliance (all six of them at Vandy), declared their intention to pour blood on the American flag at the military commissioning ceremony following graduation, and Vandy had to call out the police -- to protect the YSA!!

Ralph E. Luker - 1/4/2005

Actually, Vanderbilt's history department has done some first rate recruiting recently. Deaths and retirements forced it to rebuild much of the American side of the department. It failed to recruit a notable name or two that it sought, but it recruited some very strong historians.

Richard Henry Morgan - 1/4/2005

L'affaire Lawson pretty muched destroyed Chancellor Branscomb's reputation, and left Vandy's in tatters. Vandy had got Branscomb, of all places, from Duke Divinity. L'affaire Lawson left scars on Vandy that are only now starting to heal, and may not heal fully for another half-century. After that episode, it became a little harder to recruit faculty.

Vandy's racial rep wasn't helped much when Branscomb's successor, Alexander Heard (V.O. Key's former research assistant) invited the South African Davis Cup team to play at Vandy (during the boycott era). The Trustees must have thought they had bought a controversy-free Chancellor in Heard, as he was Chairman of the impeccably liberal Ford Foundation.

Derek Charles Catsam - 1/4/2005

Richard --
Vandy in the 60s certainly seems like something of a snake pit. I know of at least one first-rate scholar who during that era actually left Vandy to go and do his grad work elsewhere after effectively failing out. He is now one of the more respected men in the field.
I'd second Ralph's guess that his advisor was Grantham, but it is just an educated guess, nothing more.
I'm not certain, with my backlog of book reviews, articles due to publishers, and, oh yeah, my own revisions of what was once a dissertation, that I will be engaging in that great democratic upheaval, the Amazon review, any time soon.
dc

Richard Henry Morgan - 1/3/2005

Grantham would make sense. BTW, Bartley's book doesn't even have a single review over at Amazon (hint).

Ralph E. Luker - 1/3/2005

I suspect that it was Dewey Grantham, though I haven't looked it up.

Richard Henry Morgan - 1/3/2005

PS

I can't help but wonder if Bartley wasn't affected, both positively and negatively, in his choice of dissertation topic by l'affaire Lawson at Vandy -- attracted to the subject of resistance, but unwilling to take it into the Sixties, since the topic was still radioactive at Vandy, having produced a cloud that still hangs over the place somewhat today. Just a thought.

Richard Henry Morgan - 1/3/2005

Nice piece. As a faux Southerner (a Yankee who went to school in the South) I picked up on Cobb's prefatory address of "Dr." -- something you don't see that much outside the South.

Bartley did well. His masterpiece was, essentially, his dissertation. Not many write a dissertation that's in print within a year. The only example of greater efficiency I can think of is that of Alexander Marchant, who rode his dissertation to tenure in something like four years -- but then his dissertation was something like only one of only two in Brazilian history published before 1950 (if I remember correctly). Do you know who supervised Bartley's dissertation at Vandy?