Tuttle Lecture 2017

As a distinguished teacher, mentor, and scholar, Professor Emeritus Bill Tuttle guided generations of KU students. Bill taught in American studies, history, and African and African-American studies, offering the first courses at KU in African American history and post-World War II American history. His teaching awards include the W. T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, the H.O.P.E. Teaching Award from the Class of 2001, and the Chancellor’s Club Career Teaching Award. He taught KU’s first African American History course, and his class on Recent America was legendary for attracting the very best seniors on campus. In 2007, he taught at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, holding the John Adams Distinguished Fulbright Chair. He has also lectured in Cuba and Japan.

Bill Tuttle has written seminal work in African American history, labor history, the history of childhood, and recent American history; his writings have influenced scholars and students around the world. As a pioneer in history from the bottom up, he produced the classic books Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919, “Daddy’s Gone to War”: The Second World War in the Lives of America’s Children, and the co-edited Plain Folk: The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans. Through seven editions in the co-authored A People and a Nation, Bill reached millions of students. His scholarly articles have been frequently reprinted and widely cited. He is an elected Fellow of the Society of American Historians, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, the American Council of Learned Societies, and from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Stanford Universities. In 2004 KU honored him with the Balfour S. Jeffrey/Higuchi Award, for Research Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

In Lawrence, Bill Tuttle co-chaired the Second Century Fund to restore historic St. Luke AME Church.. He is a longtime member of both the NAACP and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. For his community service, Bill was recognized with the Steeples Service to Kansans Award in 2006.

The Department of American Studies and friends and family of Bill Tuttle established the annual Tuttle Lecture in 2008 to honor Bill for his 40 years of academic excellence in research and teaching, as well as his services to the university, the Lawrence community, and the nation. The Tuttle Lecture focuses on Bill’s primary teaching, research and civic concerns: African American history and culture and recent American society and politics.

October 5th, 2017

University of Kansas