William E. Leuchtenburg, eminent presidential historian and Ken Burns consultant, dies at 102

Independent

29-01-2025

William E. Leuchtenburg, a prize-winning historian widely admired for his authoritative writings on the U.S. presidency and as the reigning scholar on Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, has died at 102.
Leuchtenburg died Tuesday at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, according to his son, Joshua A. Leuchtenburg, who cited no specific cause of death.
A professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina and a published author for more than 70 years, William E. Leuchtenburg was praised for his encyclopedic knowledge and rigorous, but accessible style. He received some of the top awards given to historians, including the Parkman and Bancroft prizes, was a political analyst for CBS and NBC and consulted on several of Ken Burns ' PBS documentaries. In 2008, he was given the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award for "Distinguished Writing" of American history.
Leuchtenburg's notable books include "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal" and "The Perils of Prosperity," a history of the U.S. from World War I to the peak of the Great Depression. Although politically liberal, his expertise called upon by aides to Lyndon Johnson and other Democratic politicians, he was as willing to point out the New Deal's disappointments as its successes: His scholarship was closely studied by younger FDR historians, from Jonathan Alter to Burns collaborator Geoffrey Ward, who dedicated the 2014 book 'The Roosevelts' to Leuchtenburg. And he was otherwise known for his generosity with Ward and others who sought his expertise.
His most influential work was likely the Bancroft-winning 'Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal,' published in 1963. Leuchtenburg found that the impact of FDR's vast and unprecedented response to the Depression was limited by political calculation, especially the president's reluctance to challenge racial segregation in the South, and that 'It never demonstrated that it could achieve prosperity" until the U.S. entered World War II. But he also credited the New Deal with transforming the role of federal government and Roosevelt with reinventing the presidency, using the young medium of radio to convince millions that he knew them personally.
'Nothing is glossed over at all,' The New York Times' Charles Poore wrote upon the book's release. 'You live here through years of tumult and disaster, triumph and ineptitude and daring.'
Leuchtenburg's books on Roosevelt covered his presidency and beyond. "In the Shadow of FDR," published in 1983 and periodically updated, demonstrated how presidents from Truman to George W. Bush attempted to shun and/or embrace Roosevelt's legacy. Leuchtenburg wrote of Roosevelt's immediate successor, Harry Truman, gesturing in the White House to a portrait of FDR and admitting, "I'm trying to do what he would like." He noted the frustration of Republican Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat John F. Kennedy in being compared, unfavorably, to Roosevelt, and how Jimmy Carter began his 1976 presidential run with a speech in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR often stayed. At the time of his death, Leuchtenburg was working on an edition that would have included the administration of Joe Biden, who kept a portrait of Roosevelt in the Oval Office.
The 2005 book "The White House Looks South" featured sections on Roosevelt, Truman and Lyndon Johnson and told of how each embraced or distanced themselves from the South. Roosevelt, a native of New York, spent so much time in Warm Springs that the state's governor referred to him as our "fellow-Georgian." Johnson, a Texan, alternately identified himself as a Southerner or a Westerner, depending on the intended audience.
In the prologue, Leuchtenburg fondly noted his own journey, remembering visits to baseball spring training camps in Florida, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, and never failing on New Year's Day to partake of black-eyed peas and collard greens, "even if they are eaten with a grimace."
"In sum, I am in, but not of, the South," he concluded.
He was a popular and rigorous educator — sometimes referred to as 'The Big L' — who taught at Smith College, Harvard University and Columbia University before settling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1980s. A former president of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, he held such stature that he contributed to later editions of "The Growth of the American Republic," a standard college textbook originally written by Henry Steele Commager and Samuel Eliot Morison. Historians studying under him ranged from Allan Brandt to Howard Zinn.
Leuchtenburg was married twice, most recently to Jean Anne Leuchtenburg, and had three children.
A postal clerk's son born in New York City in 1922, William Edward Leuchtenburg was so fascinated by politics that at age 12, he raised money tutoring neighborhood kids to fund a nine-hour bus ride to Washington, where he would recall his "wide-eyed" tour of the White House and the "brand-new marble palace of the U.S. Supreme Court."
His affinity for Roosevelt was lifelong and personal. When he was 10, he sat by the radio and counted delegates as FDR was elected to his first term as president. He was able to afford college with help from a job found through a New Deal program, the National Youth Administration.
Leuchtenburg graduated from Cornell University, received a master's degree and a doctorate from Columbia and worked for a civil rights lobby and other political organizations before deciding to focus on history. His first book, 'Flood Control Politics,' came out in 1953, followed five years later by 'The Perils of Prosperity.'
In recent years, Leuchtenburg wrote a short, critical biography of FDR's predecessor, Herbert Hoover, and the 900-page 'The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.' He continued to work every morning and, at age 101, completed 'Patriot Presidents,' the first of a planned multi-volume history that he acknowledged in the book's preface 'may be too ambitious.'