Joel Williamson

Williamson was born in 1929 in rural Anderson County, South Carolina to Reverend Henry James and Carrie May Swaney Williamson.^[1] He earned his BA and MA degrees from the University of South Carolina before serving in the United States Navy during the Korean War as a naval communications officer.^[1] He then earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964.^[1] He worked with historians Kenneth Stampp and Charles G. Sellers during his PhD studies.^[1]

Williamson's first book, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 was derived from his PhD thesis.^[1] His next book, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation, published in 1984 by Oxford University Press, was a critical and academic success. A section of the book was published separately as New People: Miscegenation and Mulattos in the US and an abridged version of the book was also published as Rage of Order (1986).^[1] The Crucible of Race was very well received amongst critics and academic historians alike, becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History as well as being awarded the Francis Parkman Prize and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award.^[1][2][3] In 1970, Williamson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the history of race relations in the American South.^[1][4]

Williamson's biography of William Faulkner, William Faulkner and Southern History (Oxford University Press, 1993) was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1994 (no prize was awarded for the history category that year).^[5] The success of the Faulkner biography led to academic appointments at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University and the Center for Study of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.^[1] Williamson's final book (written with Donald Shaw) was a biography of Elvis Presley entitled Elvis Presley: A Southern Life. The biography was notable for exploring Elvis during his early career in the American South when he became a sex icon, and also focusing on his young female fans.^[6]

Williamson was a professor of history at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1960 to 2003 when he achieved emeritus honors.^[1] The Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professorship at UNC, Chapel Hill is a professorship position at the university named in his honor.^[1]