Intellectual Influence
Woodward, starting out on the left, wanted to use history to explore dissent. He approached W. E. B. Du Bois about writing about him, and thought of following his biography of Watson with one of Eugene V. Debs. He picked Georgia politician Tom Watson, who in the 1890s was a leader of Populism focusing the anger and hatred of poor whites against the establishment, banks, railroads and businessmen, and who a decade later became the leader in mobilizing the hatred of the same poor whites against blacks, and a promoter of lynching.
Read more about this topic: C. Vann Woodward
Famous quotes containing the words intellectual and/or influence:
“We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes. For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred.”
—Korean proverb, quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977)