Gavin Wright : An Oral History
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
In this 2016 oral history, Gavin Wright, Stanford University’s William Robertson Coe Professor in American Economic History, Emeritus, discusses his family background, his political organizing activities during the 1960s and 1970s, and his research interests, especially in the economy of the American South. Wright provides an eyewitness account of the development of Cliometrics, or the New Economic History, and describes his experiences as a faculty member and chair in the Department of Economics at Stanford.
Briefly describing his suburban childhood in a Quaker family, Wright says he brought an interest in history to Swarthmore College, where he discovered economics. He speaks about his engagement with civil rights issues during this period and highlights two summer projects in which he participated. The first was a 1963 voting registration project in North Carolina, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. Wright explains that it raised questions that eventually culminated in Sharing the Prize (2013), his award-winning analysis of the economics of the civil rights movement in the South. In 1964, a Swarthmore project to inform an integrated group of local teenagers about opportunities for college education introduced him to his future wife, Cathe. He shares a vivid memory of one instructor in the program, Fred Hargadon, who later became a legendary dean of admissions at Stanford. Turning to his doctoral studies at Yale University, Wright discusses his opposition to the Vietnam War, his support for presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy, and his involvement in local New Haven politics, especially the effort to elect Hank Parker as mayor. He attributes his choice of economic history as a career field to Yale professor William Nelson Parker, whose research project in North Carolina provided data for Wright’s dissertation project.
Characterizing the key players in the emerging field of Cliometrics, he describes how his research involved him in debates over the emerging methods of quantitative analysis and controversies surrounding the economics of slavery and Fogel and Engerman’s book, Time on the Cross. Wright describes the first decade of his career at the University of Michigan, where he continued to investigate the economic history of the South and where his family enjoyed a “golden age” of sorts, given the presence of other faculty families with young children there. He talks about his rationale for moving to the Stanford faculty in 1982, commenting especially on the strength of the graduate students here. He explains his involvement with the publication of the Historical Statistics of the United States and research with Paul A. David that attributed the technological leadership of the United States not so much to having natural resources as to knowing how to exploit them. Focusing on the Department of Economics, Wright discusses its culture, his two terms as department chair, fund-raising and physical plant issues, and the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to campus. Wright also reflects on his teaching strategies, the popularity of the economics major, and the unequal representation of women in economics. Recalling work on campus committees, he gives special attention to changes in student evaluation processes, the East Asian Library, the growth of the Summer Institute for High School Economics Teachers, and his role in averting the closure of Gunn High School.
- Summary
- American Friends Service Committee, Black Panther Party--New Haven, CT--May Day rally, civil rights movements--United States--history--20th century, Clayton, Eva M., Cliometrics, Conard, Joseph, David, Paul A., economic history, economics--study and teaching, Engerman, Stanley, Fogel, Robert W., 1926-2013, Genovese, Eugene, 1930-2012, Hargardon, Fred, 1934-2014, Henry M. Gunn High School (Palo Alto, CA), Historical Statistics of the United States, Humphrey, Hubert, 1911-1978, Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973--1964 campaign, Kuznets, Simon, 1981-1985, McCarthy, Eugene J., 1916-2005, new economic history, Parker, William Nelson, 1919-2000, Quakers. Reckoning with Slavery, settlement houses, Slavery--Southern states--history, Slavery--United States--economic aspects, Society of Friends, Stanford University, Stanford University--Department of Economics, Stanford University--buildings, Stanford, University--grading systems, Stanford University--Graduate School of Business, Stanford, University--Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University--Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University--Libraries--East Asia Library, Sutch, Richard, Swarthmore College, Time on the Cross, Fogel and Engerman, universities and colleges--faculty, universities and colleges--teaching, University of Chicago, University of Michigan--Department of Economics, Upward Bound, Vietnam War,, 1961-1975--draft resisters, Vietnam War, 1961-1975--protest movements, Voter registration, Warrenton (N.C.), Wright, Gavin, Yale University--Department of Economics
Description
Type of resource | text |
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Extent | 1 text file |
Place | Stanford (Calif.) |
Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Date created | August 8, 2016 - 2016-08-12 |
Language | English |
Digital origin | born digital |
Creators/Contributors
Interviewee | Wright, Gavin, 1943- | |
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Creator | Wright, Gavin, 1943- | |
Interviewer | Marine-Street, Natalie J. | |
Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Subjects
Subject | Wright, Gavin, 1943- |
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Subject | Stanford University. Department of Economics |
Subject | Cliometrics |
Subject | Economic history |
Genre | Interview |
Bibliographic information
Biographical Profile |
Gavin Wright is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History Emeritus at Stanford University. He came to Stanford from the University of Michigan in 1982 and retired from teaching in 2015. Wright’s research primarily concerns the economic history of the United States, with special attention to the distinctive trajectory of the American South. Wright attended Swarthmore College, graduating in 1965 with a major in economics. During the summer of 1963, he took part in a voter registration project in Warren County, North Carolina, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, beginning a life-long engagement with the American South. This interest was intensified nearly thirty years later, when Eva Clayton, the young housewife and mother who initiated the Warrenton project, was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1992. In 1964, Wright worked on the Swarthmore-Wade House Summer Studies Program, which brought middle-school students from poor areas to the campus, in hopes of stimulating their interest in college education. This was a forerunner of the federally-funded Upward Bound program, which continues on the Swarthmore campus and elsewhere. After college Wright entered graduate school in economics at Yale University, where he studied under economic historian William N. Parker. Parker was then in the final stages of work on the Parker-Gallman sample from the manuscript census of 1860, matching observations from the free and slave census schedules with those from the agricultural census to generate a major resource for quantitative studies in the emerging field known as the “new economic history” or “cliometrics.” The sample became the basis for Wright’s dissertation, completed in 1969. Interest in the economics of American slavery grew during the 1970s, provoked in large part by publication in 1974 of Time on the Cross by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman. The book argued not only that slavery was far milder than previously believed, but that the slave system was more efficient and productive than its free-labor counterpart. Building on his thesis work, Wright joined a team of economic historians who presented a systematic critique in 1976: Reckoning With Slavery, edited by Paul A. David of Stanford and Peter Temin of MIT. The full statement of Wright’s analysis was his 1978 book The Political Economy of the Cotton South. In brief, Wright found that slavery had no special productive magic; the apparent evidence to this effect primarily reflected the reallocation of labor (female as well as male) from nonmarket to commercial activities, i.e., from corn production to cotton, and from household chores to field work. Wright also showed that rapid growth of the antebellum southern economy was propelled by extraordinary (but unsustainable) growth of cotton demand at five percent per year. Despite frequently contentious debates, these results have stood the test of time. An updated restatement appeared as Slavery and American Economic Development in 2006. Wright has taken up numerous topics in economic history, including: development of the southern economy after the Civil War; international diffusion of textile technology; and the rise of the United States to world economic preeminence, with special focus on the role of natural resources. Culminating one major research strand was the publication in 2013 of Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South. The book argues that the breakthroughs in racial justice of the 1960s launched an economic as well as a moral and legal revolution, whose gains were shared by white as well as black southerners. Wright has received numerous honors, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, the Society of American Historians in 2009, and a fellow of the Cliometrics Society in 2010. Old South, New South won the Owsley Prize as the best book in southern history in 1986. Sharing the Prize was awarded the Alice Hanson Jones Prize as the best book in North American Economic History during 2013-2014. Wright especially appreciated the 2011 festschrift prepared by his former students and colleagues: Economic Evolution and Revolution in Historical Time, edited by Paul W. Rhode, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, and David F. Weiman. |
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Audio/Video |
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Finding Aid | |
Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/yd047sk7389 |
Location | SC0932 |
Repository | Stanford University. Libraries. Department of Special Collections and University Archives |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Collection
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program interviews, 1999-2022
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