William Archibald Dunning, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

William Archibald Dunning

American historian

Date of Birth: 12-May-1857

Place of Birth: Plainfield, New Jersey, United States

Date of Death: 15-Aug-1922

Profession: historian, university teacher

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

William Archibald Dunning (12 May 1857 – 25 August 1922) was an American historian and political scientist at Columbia University noted for his work on the Reconstruction era of the United States.
He founded the informal Dunning School of interpreting the Reconstruction era through his own writings and the Ph.D.
dissertations of his numerous students.
Historian Howard K.
Beale was a leader of the "revisionist" school of the 1930s that broke with the Dunning interpretation.
Beale says the Dunning School broke new ground by escaping the political polemics of the day and used "meticulous and thorough research [...] in an effort to determine the truth rather than prove a thesis." Beale states that, "The emphasis of the Dunning school was upon the harm done to the South by Radical Reconstruction and on the sordid political and economic motives behind Radicalism." However, Dunning has also been criticized for his "blatant use of the discipline of history for reactionary ends" and for offering "scholarly legitimacy to the disenfranchisement of southern blacks and to the Jim Crow system."