George Fredrickson

George Frederickson was a powerful force in reshaping historical views of the Civil War and race relations in the United States. He helped invent the field of comparative history through his seminal work White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Few, if any, other historians have so imaginatively used a comparative approach to racism in America. Fredrickson earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Harvard in 1956 and a doctorate in history, also from Harvard, in 1964. He taught at Harvard and Northwestern before coming to Stanford as the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History in 1984. Read Professor Frederickson's full obituary in Stanford News .