George M. Fredrickson was an American author, activist, historian, and professor. He was the Edgar E. Robinson Emeritus Professor of History at Stanford University until his retirement in 2002 and continued to publish. One of his best known works remains White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History, which made him the finalist of the Pulitzer Prize for History.
Early life and education
Fredrickson was born on July 16, 1934, in Bristol, Connecticut, and spent his most of his life in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He attended high school in South Dakota, was accepted into Harvard University, and graduated magna cum laude in 1956. Joining the Navy, he served for three years before being discharged in 1960. Returning to Harvard University, he earned his doctorate in 1964.
Academic career and activism
After receiving his doctorate, Fredrickson taught at the university for three years before moving to Northwestern University. He was a William Smith Mason Professor after 1979 and moved onto teach at Stanford University until his retirement. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Olso during his undergraduate years and a Fulbright professor at the University of Moscow in 1983. In his college years, he was one of the many white college students who traveled to the South in support of the civil rights movement for African Americans and joined the March on Washington in 1963. Fredrickson was avid in his protest against the apartheid in South Africa, even "urging Stanford to divest its stock in companies doing business with South Africa" and with the late Stanford sociologist St. Clair Drake, "delivered a petition signed by 206 faculty members to the Stanford Board of Trustees." In the foreword of Racism: A Short History republished in 2015, Stanford historian Albert M. Camarillo discusses the courses that he co-wrote and taught with Fredrickson. They developed a survey course called "Race and Ethnicity in the American Experience" that "examined how ideologies of race were manifested in societal institutions and policies that shaped the socioeconomic statues of communities of color in North America from the colonial era through the twentieth century." Another course that they taught was "Comparative Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity" which were inspired by a seminar they participated from 1992 to 1994. He co-founded the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford in 1996. Fredrickson was the president of the Organization of American Historians in 1997-98 and was appointed twice as a senior fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He received fellowships from the Humanities Center and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Fredrickson was best known for his work in the fields of comparative history, along with his work in the study of the history of racism and white supremacy.
Works
In his lifetime, Fredrickson published many works covering themes of racism, equality, and shifting ideology. He published eight books:
The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union
The Comparative Imagination: On Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements
Racism: A Short History
Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race
Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History captured his conception "of racial inequality and racism, as ideology and practice in Western societies over the past half millennium," and how it is "based on the three primary components: ideas of racial purity, cultural essentialism or particularism, and a 'them' vs. 'us' mindset in which difference and power structured racist regimes." His essays and articles included expanding on themes of comparative ideology on racism in the United States and South Africa.
