Coulter, Ellis Merton
Item
- Connection to Legacies of American Slavery Database
- Name
- One-line bio
- Biography
- Date of Birth
- Date of Death
- Historical Period
- Related Organization(s)
- Employed By
- Learn More About this Subject
-
Coulter, Ellis Merton
-
A University of Georgia professor and historian of the South, helped shape the southern public’s interpretation of its heritage in general and Georgia’s in particular.
-
E. Merton Coulter taught at the University of Georgia from 1919 to 1958 (serving as chair of the history department from 1940 until retirement), edited the Georgia Historical Quarterly for fifty years, and produced 26 books, 10 edited volumes, more than 100 articles, and numerous book reviews and newspaper columns. He was also a founding member of the Southern Historical Association, serving as its first president in 1934 and nurturing it throughout its early years.
Coulter’s research and teaching presented sympathetic views of the Old South, the Confederacy, and Jim Crow. His perspective was widely disseminated through his publication of the college textbook A Short History of Georgia (1933; revised 1947, 1960) and his junior high school text History of Georgia (1954). Coulter was a prolific author, and Lost Cause themes permeated other works. He is best remembered for his two contributions to the History of the South series jointly sponsored by Louisiana State University and the Littlefield Fund for Southern History at the University of Texas. The South During Reconstruction (1947) and Confederate States of America (1952) are considered by many scholars to be historical apologies justifying southern secession, defending the Confederate cause, and condemning Reconstruction. These works, along with his other writings, presented a powerful intellectual paradigm useful to those opposed to the mid-century crusade for civil rights reforms.
-
1890
-
1981
Position: 209 (184 views)