Adam Fairclough is Professor Emeritus of American History at the Leiden University Institute for History (Leiden University Chair of the History and Culture of North America, from 2005 to 2016).

More information about Adam Fairclough

Adam Fairclough is Professor Emeritus of American History at the Leiden University Institute for History (Leiden University Chair of the History and Culture of North America, from 2005 to 2016).

Curriculum vitae

Adam Fairclough studied history at Oxford University and received his doctorate degree from the University of Keele (1978) with his dissertation “A study of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Rise and Decline of the Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement”. Subsequently he wrote several books and numerous articles on the black civil rights movement in the United States, his main area of expertise. Adam has taught at the New University of Ulster, the University of Liverpool, the University of Wales, Lampeter, the University of Leeds and the University of East Anglia. In 2005 he was appointed as The Leiden University Chair of the History and Culture of North America.
 
Adam Fairclough received several prestigious research fellowships: an American Studies Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Civil Rights, Carter G. Woodson Institute, University of Virginia, an Andrew Mellon Fellowship of the National Humanities Center, North Carolina, twice a Personal Research Award of the British Academy, a research leave grant of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, and a Fellowship at the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.

Major publications

Among his book publications are:

• To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987; rev. ed., 2001), which was awarded the Outstanding Book Award of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights;
• Martin Luther King (London: Cardinal, 1990);
• Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), for which he received the Lillian Smith Book Award (1995); the Louisiana Literary Award (1995), the L. Kemper Williams Prize (1995), and the Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights (1996);
• Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001);
• Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Viking, 2001; Penguin, 2002);
• A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), winner of the History Education Society best book prize.

Recent articles

• "Public Corruption in Louisiana: Then and Now." In Bayou Dilemma: Louisiana in Crisis and Change, 65-89.  Ed. Sam C. Hyde, Jr.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2024.
• "The People That Walked in Darkness: What Europe Gave to the American Civil Rights Movement." In American Mosaic: Festschrift in Honor of Cornelis A. Van Minnen, 43-52.  Ed. William E. Leuchtenberg.  Amsterdam: VU Press, 2017.

Recent lectures

• "William Pitt Kellogg: 'Carpetbagger' and Political Survivor."  Louisiana Historical Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, March 22, 2024.
• "Louisiana: The Most Corrupt State?"  University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, March 15, 2023.
• "An Enduring Burden: Historical Corruption in Louisiana Politics."  Conference, Louisiana in Continuity and Change, University of Southeastern Louisiana, Hammond, September 27, 2022.
• "The Civil Rights Movement in an International Context: How Europeans Supported Martin Luther King, Jr."  Cleveringabijeenkomst, Washington D.C., November 29, 2018.

Activities