Biography:

Historian; University professor. Born– January 20, 1890, Montgomery. Parents– Lawrence Monroe and Annie Scott (McGehee) Owsley. Married– Harriet Fason Chappell, July 24, 1920. Children– Three. Education– Fifth District Agricultural School in Wetumpka, Ala. Alabama Polytechnic Institute, B.S., 1911; M.A., 1912; University of Chicago, M.A., 1917; Ph.D., 1924. Taught in public schools and API, 1912-1919; Birmingham-Southern College, 1919-1920; Vanderbilt University, 1920-1949; University of Alabama (1949-1954), filling the Hugo Friedman Chair of Southern History, developing a new Ph.D. Program, and heading the Department of History (1952-55).  Fulbright Lecturer at St. John’s College, Cambridge, 1956. Guggenheim Fellow, 1927-28. Contributed articles to many professional journals in history.  An active participant in the Southern Agrarian movement of the 1930’s. Died in England, October 21, 1956.

Source:

Contemporary Authors online; Dictionary of American Biography, Suppl. 6 and Who Was Who in America, Vol. 3.

Publication(s):

Defeatism in the Confederacy.  Raleigh, NC:  Edwards and Broughton, 1926.

King Cotton Diplomacy. Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1931.

Plain Folks of the Old South. Baton Rouge, La.; Louisiana State University Press, 1949.

The South, Old and New Frontiers. Athens, Ga.; University of Georgia Press, 1949.

States’ Rights in the Confederacy.  University of Chicago Press, 1925.

Joint_Publication(s):

Know Alabama. Birmingham, Ala.; Colonial Press, 1961.

A Short History of the American People. 2 vols. New York; D. Van Nostrand, 1945-1948.

The United States from Colony to World Power. New York; D. Van Nostrand, 1949.

Contributor;

I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, by Twelve Southerners.  New York:  Harper, 1930.

Who Owns America?: A new declaration of independence.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936.

Papers:

The papers of Frank Lawrence Owsley are held by the Archives and Special Collections Department of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University, Nashville.