 Southern
historian George
Tindall dies in Chapel Hill at 85
CHAPEL HILL - Southern historian Dr. George Brown Tindall, Kenan
professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, who is remembered as an early advocate of equality for black
Americans, died Saturday (Dec. 2) in Chapel Hill. He was 85.
On the UNC history faculty from 1958 until he retired in 1990,
Tindall also pioneered the discussion of Southern myths, which
he said white Southerners developed after the Civil War to explain
how what they saw as a just and noble cause could have been lost.
A native of Greenville, S.C., he was president of the Southern
Historical Association in 1973. Tindall's first book, "South
Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900," was published by the University
of South Carolina Press in 1952. He converted his exhaustive research
of primary sources into this readable account of segregation and
the methodical disfranchisement of blacks into a state of economic
dependency.
His books also include "America: A Narrative History" (W.W.
Norton, 1984, 1988) and "Emergence of the New South, 1913-1945" (1967),
a volume of the series "A History of the South" from
Louisiana State University Press. "Emergence" was honored
by the press, the North Carolina Society of Mayflower Descendants,
the Southern Regional Council and the Southern Historical Association.
Tindall was a major editor and contributor to the Encyclopedia
of Southern Culture, an eight-pound, 1,656-page tome by 800 experts
on the region that UNC Press published in 1989 and recently updated.
The volume's co-editor, Dr. William Ferris, is a former chairman
of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a UNC history professor
and senior associate director of the university's Center for the
Study of the American South. He called Tindall a giant among Southern
scholars.
"He was a great teacher and a great scholar, and his legacy
as a Southern historian is outstanding," Ferris said. "His
scholarship was extraordinary, but his personal warmth and generosity
also were beyond measure."
Tindall also pioneered the study of diversity in the South beyond
black and white, to the recognition of Irish, Jewish, Scottish
and other heritages represented in the region, he said.
Even in recent years, Tindall attended weekly luncheon discussions
on the UNC campus by Southern studies experts, where "George
was sort of the chairman of the board," Ferris said. And until
recent years, Tindall could be seen riding his bicycle to class.
Tindall's son, Bruce Tindall, a lecturer at the University of
California, San Diego, said his parents sent him to what likely
was the first integrated day-care center in Chapel Hill, and that
his father stood fast for human rights and civil rights through
his academic career and support of like-minded political candidates.
He remembered his father organizing a meeting of historians in
the 1950s for which he struggled with hotels to find a place that
black scholars and white could sit down to dinner together.
George Tindall began his academic life with a bachelor's degree
in English from Furman University in his hometown of Greenville,
S.C. He then fought in the Pacific theater of World War II with
the U.S. Army Air Force, rising from the rank of private to second
lieutenant, from 1942-46.
He completed master's and doctoral degrees in history at UNC,
then taught at several other universities before returning to Carolina
in 1958.
In 1991, some of Tindall's former students wrote essays in his
honor, which LSU Press published as the collection "The Adaptable
South." He advised 26 doctoral candidates and other students
at UNC, many of whom now are history teachers and professors across
the country.
"In the fall of 1966, I walked into George Tindall's seminar
and my life changed," wrote Dr. Elizabeth Jacoway in the book's
introduction. "Within a matter of weeks, the elegant gentleman
with the wry wit and the bow ties had led me into a world of new
concerns, deeper meanings and higher callings, and in his gentle
way, he encouraged me to see that this could be my world, too."
Tindall is survived by his wife, Blossom McGarrity Tindall, of
Chapel Hill; son, Bruce Tindall of San Diego; daughter, Blair Tindall
of Santa Monica, Calif., and one grandson.
A memorial service will be held at the Carol Woods Retirement
Community in Chapel Hill in January. Arrangements are being handled
by Walker's Funeral Home at 120 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, N.C.,
27516, (919) 942-3861.
Memorial contributions may be made to the George B. Tindall Endowed
Lectureship and Scholarship Fund, Furman University, 3300 Poinsett
Highway, Greenville, S.C. 29613.
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