LaWanda Fenlason Cox was a pioneering historian of the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 and the period of Reconstruction. Cox was born on September 24, 1909 in Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

, Washington. She received her Bachelors at the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

 in 1931, her masters from Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

 (1934) and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1941. Cox studied at Smith College with Merle Curti

Merle Curti

Merle Curti was a leading American historian. He taught a large number of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in developing the fields of social history and intellectual history. As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy, and to the Turnerian...

 a social historian, and at Berkeley with John Schuster Taylor an economist. She was a member of the history faculty at Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 and the City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

's Graduate Center (and briefly, at Goucher College

Goucher College

Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...

) from 1940, until her retirement from teaching in 1971. She remained a very active historian, until the loss of her sight in 1989; she died on February 2, 2005 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

Writings

She was the author of several major works including, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (1963) which she wrote with her husband, John H. Cox. She also wrote on her own: Reconstruction: The Negro, and the New South (1973), and also Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study of Presidential Leadership (1981).