William Roy Smith

William Roy Smith (1876–1938) was an American academic historian.

Professor

William Roy Smith

Ph.D.
Born1876
Died1938
NationalityUnited States
Spouse(s)Marion Parris Smith
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Texas, Columbia University
ThesisSouth Carolina as a Royal Province, 1710-1776 (1902)
Doctoral advisorWilliam Archibald Dunning
Academic work
DisciplineHistorian
Sub-disciplineAmerican History

Career

Smith studied first at the University of Texas (A.B. 1897, A.M. 1898), and went on to complete a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1902, as a student of William Archibald Dunning. He joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr College in 1902, and became professor of history in 1914. He married Marion Parris on 11 June 1912 in Manhattan, New York. He died in Bryn Mawr Hospital in February 1938.[1]

Smith's essay "Negro Suffrage in the South", published in Studies in Southern History and Politics (1914), argued that the disenfranchisement of Black voters had been necessary in the late 19th century, but looked forward to a time when "a steadily increasing number of negroes, who are qualified by intelligence and character, will be readmitted to the voting ranks". Smith's justifications for post-Reconstruction disenfranchisement led W. E. B. Du Bois to list him in Black Reconstruction (1935) among "authors [that] believe the Negro to be sub-human and congenitally unfitted for citizenship and the suffrage".[2]

Publications
  • "The Quarrel between Governor Smith and the Provisional Government of the Republic", Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 5/4 (1902), pp. 269–346
  • South Carolina as a Royal Province, 1710-1776 (Macmillan, 1903)
  • "Negro Suffrage in the South", in Studies in Southern History and Politics Inscribed to William Archibald Dunning (Columbia University Press, 1914), pp. 229–256

References
  1. "Dr. William R. Smith, Bryn Mawr Teacher. Historian Joined the Faculty in 1902. Once Lectured at Barnard. Dies at 61". New York Times. February 14, 1938. Retrieved 2016-10-23.
  2. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (Free Press, 1998), p. 731.
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