Winthrop Jordan, RIP

Please pardon me one more intrusion on the moneylaw turf, to commemorate one of our country's greatest historians, Winthrop Jordan, who I have just learned died on Friday. My favorite book of his is White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550-1812. Much learning in there about the racial and legal origins of slavery. It is one of the finest works of history I have ever read.

He was educated at Harvard College (graduating with a social relations degree in the storied class of 1953) and then a Ph.D. in history from Brown University in 1960. He taught for a number of years at the University of California, Berkeley and then, like some other historians of the South with great affection for this region, he moved here--to Ole Miss in 1982. The Jackson Mississippi Clarion Ledger has more details.