obituaries

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/16/2020
  

  David Carter, a Historian of Stonewall, Is Dead at 67

  David Carter's research clarified conflicting accounts of the events of June 28, 1969 and helped ensure that the portion of Greenwich Village surrounding the Stonewall Inn would be protected by the National Register of Historic Places.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/14/2020
  

  Richard Gilder, Donor to Parks, Museum and History, Dies at 87

  Richard Gilder used his fortune to advance many passion projects, including the refurbishment of New York's Central Park and the preservation of primary documents important to the study of American history. 

• 
• SOURCE: Fox Carolina
  5/12/2020
  

  Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster, Dies at 71

  Carolyn Reidy helped bring the writings of historians including David Blight and David McCullough to a wide readership.  

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/11/2020
  

  Barbara Babcock, a Force for Women in the Law, Dies at 81

  “I would not hold the good job I have today were it not for Barbara,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/10/2020
  

  Little Richard: An Ecstasy You Couldn’t Refuse

  Little Richard was a challenge to 1950s proprieties: to segregation, to musical decorum, to chastity, to straightness.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/8/2020
  

  Ian Whitcomb, Rocker Turned Pop Music Historian, Dies at 78

  Ian Whitcomb forsook pop stardom to study and preserve forms of music popular before rock and roll.   

• 
• SOURCE: PinkNews
  5/9/2020
  

  David Carter, The Gay Historian Who Wrote The ‘Definitive History’ Of The Stonewall Uprising, Has Died Of A Heart Attack Aged 67

  The gay historian wrote Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, which was published in 2004 and cemented Carter as the leading expert on the riots outside New York’s Stonewall Inn in June 1969.

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• SOURCE: LAist
  5/4/2020
  

  The Legacy of Bobby Lee Verdugo, A Leader Of East LA Walkouts

  Verdugo, who became one of the founders of the Chicano student movement and spent much of his life mentoring youth, died Friday. He was 69.

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• SOURCE: The Way of Improvement Leads Home
  5/3/2020
  

  Remembering John Murrin

  The early American historian passed away on May 2 after contracting coronavirus.

• 
• SOURCE: WCMU
  5/1/2020
  

  'Fresh Air' Remembers Jazz Archivist And Historian Michael Cogswell

  Michael Cogswell was a musician and historian who managed the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens. He was interviewed by Fresh Air in 2001.

• 
• SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
  4/28/2020
  

  Alan Shestack, Influential Museum Director And Art History Scholar, Dies At 81

  Shestack's decades-long career included top leadership roles at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Yale University Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Art.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/16/2020
  

  He Risked His Life Photographing the 1961 Freedom Riders. Theodore Gaffney Just Died from the Coronavirus at 92.

  Theodore Gaffney eagerly signed up for an assignment where he found himself risking his life and documenting one of the most tumultuous 48 hours in civil rights history.

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• SOURCE: Tuscaloosa (AL) News
  4/19/2020
  

  A Historic Life

  Friends and colleagues of Alabama historian Sarah Wiggins echoed certain refrains time and again, among them: “She did not suffer fools gladly.”

• 
• SOURCE: Oregon Live
  4/20/2020
  

  Pellom McDaniels, Former Oregon State Defensive Star and NFL Veteran, Dies at 52

  Pellom McDaniels, 52, became a college professor after his football days, earning a PhD in American Studies. He was an assistant professor of African American Studies at Emory University, as well as a curator of African American collections for the school’s library.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/15/2020
  

  Glenna Goodacre, Artist who Sculpted Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Dies at 80

  Ms. Goodacre's Vietnam Women’s Memorial, a 6-foot-8 bronze sculpture of three uniformed women and a wounded serviceman, honors the roughly 265,000 military women of the Vietnam era, about 10,000 of whom served in Vietnam itself.

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  4/15/2020
  

  A Requiem for Academics

  James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, noted that older academics are both the bridges and the glue of not just institutions, but all sorts of identification that people have, and can hold an institution and people together.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/15/2020
  

  Henry F. Graff, Columbia Historian of Presidents, Dies at 98

  An author of 12 books and countless articles and a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review, Professor Henry Graff was best known as a keen observer of the men who occupied the White House — 17 of whom presided during his lifetime.

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• SOURCE: University of Washington History Department
  4/15/2020
  

  In Memoriam: William Rorabaugh

  William Rorabaugh, known to his colleagues as Bill, was a popular teacher and prolific scholar whose legacy will be felt for many years to come.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/11/2020
  

  Ruth B. Mandel, a Voice for Women in Politics, Dies at 81

  Her experience fleeing the Nazis on the doomed “Voyage of the Damned” informed her faith in democracy as head of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/10/2020
  

  William R. Polk, Historian and Middle East Envoy, Dies at 91

  Over six decades, Mr. Polk delved into multiple careers, working in and out of government, writing, co-writing or editing more than two-dozen books and traveling the globe, often to hot spots.