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This week we highlight Dr. Vernon Burton!
Dr. Burton is a recognized authority on race relations and is often called upon as an expert witness in discrimination and voting rights cases throughout the United States. He will be participating in the Conversation on the State of African American History in South Carolina with Dr. Walter Edgar where they will engage in a captivating discussion on the current state of African American history in South Carolina and the United States.
Dr. Burton has an impressive list of honors and recognitions. He has the honor of being the inaugural Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Chair of History and Professor Global Black Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, and Computer Science at Clemson University. He directed the Clemson CyberInstitute from 2010 to 2016. In 2022 Burton received the Clemson University Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievements in Research. In 2016 Burton received the College of Architecture, Art, and Humanities Dean’s Award for “Excellence in Research” and in 2019 the College’s award for “Outstanding Achievement in Service.” From 2008-2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He was the founding Director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois, where he is emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, and Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology. He serves as Executive Director of the College of Charleston’s Low Country and Atlantic World Program; in 2022 the program honored Burton by designating the best conference paper given annually, the “Vernon Burton Research Award.” Burton served as interim chair, and then vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Congressional National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, 2009-2017.
Dr. Burton is also the author or co-author of numerous publications. Co-authored with Armand Derfner, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court (2021) was featured at sessions of the 2021 Social Science History Association and the 2022 Midwestern Political Science Association. The Age of Lincoln (2007) won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction and was selected for Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and Military Book Club. In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (1985) was featured at sessions of the Southern Historical Association and the Social Science History Association annual meetings. These three publications were also nominated for Pulitzers.
Among his honors are fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Humanities Center, the U.S. Department of Education, National Park Service, and the Carnegie Foundation. He was a Pew National Fellow Carnegie Scholar for 2000-2001. He was elected to the Society of American Historians and was one of ten historians selected to contribute to the Presidential Inaugural Portfolio (January 21, 2013) by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Burton was elected into the S.C. Academy of Authors in 2015, and in 2016 he received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities from the South Carolina Humanities Council, and in 2021 he was awarded the Benjamin E. Mays Legacy Award. In 2022 he was appointed to the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission, inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College, and received the Southern Historical Association’s John Hope Franklin Lifetime Achievement Award.
Join us at the conference to listen to this fascinating Conversation with celebrated historian Dr. Vernon Burton!
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