Thank you Jack. William McFeely most definitely deserves recognition. I plan on finishing my list before the end of Summer. William McFeely will be remembered soon.
This profile appears with other deceased alums from the class of ’52 – Kenneth Brown and Ulric Haynes
William McFeely ‘52, historian and supporter of African-American Studies (1930- 2019)
Obituary and Tribute
William S. McFeely, a historian who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Ulysses S. Grant but was also well known for advancing the field of black history, died on Wednesday [in December, 2019] in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. He was 89. Said historian Eric Foner, “McFeely played a major role in the re-evaluation of Reconstruction — seeing it not as an era of misgovernment and corruption as previous scholars too often did, but as a key moment, despite its flaws, in the ongoing struggle for racial justice in this country.” Professor McFeely taught at Yale [from 1966] until 1970, helping to establish the university’s Department of African American Studies and teaching a core course on African-American history. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard scholar, was among the black students in his class. “Professor McFeely’s riveting lectures brought to life in the most vivid way a world about which most of us had been unaware,” Professor Gates wrote in an email, “a world of black achievement, sacrifice, resistance and attainment, facts and stories that had been edited out of standard American history textbooks.” In 1970 Professor McFeely became a history professor and dean of the faculty at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. He stayed 16 years then went to the University of Georgia. McFeely retired in 1997 and was a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a currently a visiting scholar and associate member of Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, and an associate of their Humanities Center.
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._McFeely
NYT obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/books/william-mcfeely-pulitzer-winning-historian-dies-at-89.html
*******************
From: skipjen2865@aol.com <skipjen2865@aol.com>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2026 6:43 PM
To: Jack Hailey <jack@gacinstitute.org>
Subject: Re: Charlie Stillman profile
Jack,
This is great! He seems to have been a great guy. Please add this to his profile.
What do you have for for Bill McFeely?
Everett
Amos Newport, born c. 1715 in Africa
Robert Purvis (1810-1898), abolitionist, likely attended Amherst Academy
Charles Thomson, janitor from 1850s into the 1890s
Henry Martin Tupper, Class of 1859 – founded Shaw University
Frank Alvin Hoser, class of 1875, teacher/mentor of W.E.B. Du Bois
F. Dwight Newport, athletic trainer for 42 years
Robert Gilbert “Gil” Roberts, janitor of Lord Jeffrey Amherst Club, died in 2002 at age 106
Lillie Bell Jenkins (1925 – 2010)
Nancy Louise Holt Miller (1926-2015) and Carol Holt Miller (c.1954– 984)
William McFeely ‘52
Richard Romer ‘52
Ken Howard ‘66
Charlie Stillman ‘67
Richard O’Daniel, Dean during 1973
David Wills 1942-2024 – documentary history project on African American Religion
Liz Agosto – dean from 2019 to 2023
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