Annette Gordon-Reed (1958- )

October 28, 2017 
/ Contributed By: Robert Fikes

Annette Gordon-Reed

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Award-winningย historianย Annette Gordon-Reed was born in Livingston,ย Texas, on November 19, 1958, the daughter of military veteran Alfred Gordon Sr. and Bettye Jean Gordon, an English teacher. In her youth, Annette loved to read and write and was fascinated by the family of Thomas Jefferson, something that would loom large in her future. An outstanding high school student, Gordon-Reed earned her bachelorโ€™s degree in history with high distinction at Dartmouth College in 1981. In 1984, she obtained her lawย degree (Juris Doctor) at Harvard University, where she was a member of theย Harvard Law Review. She began her professional career as an attorney in theย New York-based international law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, then as general counsel for the New York City Board of Corrections, which involved hearing inmates appeal disciplinary actions.

Gordon-Reed began her academicย teaching career at New York Law School in 1992. She taught there for eight years and became the Wallace Stevens Professor of Law. In the spring of 2007, she started teaching at the Newark,ย New Jersey, campus of Rutgers University as a Board of Governors Professor of History. Acclaimed for her scholarship, in 2010, Gordon-Reed was lured to Harvard Law School to teach as the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While at Harvard, she was also the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study from 2010 to 2016 and the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Queen’s College, University of Oxford from 2014 to 2015.

Both a legal scholar and historian, Gordon-Reedโ€™s books are, chronologically,ย Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversyย (University of Virginia Press, 1997), her groundbreaking work that garnered much attention; as co-author/contributor,ย Vernon Can Read: A Memoirย (2001); as editor,ย Race On Trial: Law and Justice in American Historyย (2002), with eleven contributors on the topic;ย The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Familyย (2008), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and thirteen other honors;ย Andrew Johnsonย (2011), concerning the failed seventeenth U.S. president; and, as principal author,ย Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imaginationย (2017), an examination of the interior life of an American president. Her articles have been published in theย Journal of American History, History Today, William and Mary Quarterly,ย Early American Literature,ย American Heritage, and theย American Historical Review.

Gordon-Reed has been the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship โ€œgenius grant,โ€ Guggenheim Fellowship, Cullman Center Fellowship, and the National Humanities Medal. She has received honorary academic degrees from the College of William and Mary and Ramapo College. She is married to New York Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Reed, and they have a son and daughter.

About the Author

Author Profile

Robert Fikes, Jr., a 1970 graduate of Tuskegee University, earned graduate degrees in modern European history and library science at the University of Minnesota. Retired since 2017, he worked as a reference librarian at San Diego State University where he was also a subject bibliographer for Africana Studies, European, American, Middle Eastern, and African history. Fikes has published numerous journal articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, newspaper and magazine contributions, bibliographies, and several print and online books pertaining to history, art, and literature.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Fikes, R. (2017, October 28). Annette Gordon-Reed (1958- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/gordon-reed-annette-1958/

Source of the Author's Information:

Annette Gordon-Reed, MacArthur Foundation, https://www.macfound.org/fellows/32/#photos; Chris Lombardi interview of Annette Gordon-Reed, https://womensvoicesforchange.org/she-would-be-be-on-a-coin-wvfc-talks-to-annette-gordon-reed-about-sex-race-sally-hemings-and-history.htm; Harvard Law School profile of Annette Gordon-Reed, http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10329/Gordon-Reed.

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