Anne Firor Scott, former professor of history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, passed away on February 5, 2019. She was 97 years old.
Dr. Scott began her career in education as a part-time instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. She was hired as a full-time Duke faculty member in 1961. In 1980, she became the history department chair and she retired from her position in 1991. That same year, she received the University Medal for Distinguished, Meritorious Services from Duke. In 2013, she was presented the 2013 National Humanities Medal by President Obama for her “groundbreaking research spanning ideology, race, and class.”
Outside of Duke, Dr. Scott led the North Carolina Commission on the Status of Women and served on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women. She also received the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Service Award. The Lerner-Scott Prize, named for Scott and historian Gerda Lerner, is awarded to the best doctoral dissertation on the subject of U.S. women’s history by the Organization of American Historians. In addition, a scholarship in her name supports a graduate student’s work at Duke.
Dr. Scott is the author or editor of nine books including The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics 1830-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 1970), Making the Invisible Woman Visible (University of Illinois Press, 1984),and Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Letters in Black and White (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
“The department is saddened by the news of Anne Scott’s passing,” said John J. Martin, the current chair of the Duke history department. “Professor Scott was not only a courageous and pioneering scholar but also a major architect of our program, especially but not only in the area of women’s history.”
Dr. Scott was a graduate of the University of Georgia. She held a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.