April 30, 2015
Historian Lou Williams wins best article prize
Lou Williams, professor in the history department, is the winner of the 2014 Presidents' Memorial Award by the Publications Committee of the Louisiana Historical Association for her article, "Federal Enforcement of African American Voting Rights in the Post-Redemption South: Louisiana and the Election of 1878." The article was published in the summer 2014 issue of the journal Louisiana History.
The Presidents' Memorial Award is given each spring to honor the best article published in the journal during the previous calendar year. Williams is an expert on post-Civil War Reconstruction, and is author of "The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Clan Trials, 1871-1872" from the University of Georgia Press; the introduction to "Bitter Freedom: William Stone's Record of Service in the Freedmen's Bureau," from the University of South Carolina Press; and "The Ellenton Riot Case and Federal Enforcement of Black Rights in post-Redemption South Carolina, in Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1800-1900," from the University of Georgia Press.
Williams' current research focuses on the ongoing efforts of the federal government to protect African American voting rights in late-19th century South Carolina, and the countervailing efforts at the state level to maintain white supremacy.
In the history department, she teaches popular undergraduate and graduate courses on the American South, the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, the Gilded Age and the 19th century.