Congratulating Professor Charles Crawford on 60 Years At the University of Memphis
Floor Speech
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Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a great professor, historian and my friend, Charles W. Crawford, who was recently recognized by the University of Memphis for teaching 60 years in its History Department. Professor Crawford, whose Tennessee: Land, History and Government (1984) and its 1990 update, Dynamic Tennessee, served as high school textbooks for most students across our state for decades, also has the distinction of having taught Tennessee history to future Tennessee Congressman, Senator and Vice President Al Gore in the summer before Gore's senior year at Harvard. Professor Crawford's first of 20 published books was an illustrated history of his adopted city, Yesterday's Memphis (1976) and he wrote the history of the local National Bank of Commerce on its 120th anniversary. Professor Crawford was a favorite interview for many journalists and authors and he served as a consultant on many media projects, including the 1984 documentary film ``The Old Forest'' and commentary on the local public television station, WQED. A native of rural north-central Arkansas, where he still has a home, Professor Crawford, 91, received a bachelor's degree from then-Harding College (now University) in Searcy, Arkansas, a master's from the University of Arkansas, and a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi, all in history. He started teaching as a graduate assistant at Ole Miss and began as an assistant professor at then- Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) in 1962. In 1967, the university's president, Cecil C. Humphreys, asked him to start its Oral History Project, and he has subsequently conducted or overseen more than 2000 interviews, including with military veterans, experts on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Mississippi River flood of 1937, and a lot of politicians, and served as president of the national Oral History Association. As a professor, he has directed students in completing 38 doctoral dissertations and 68 students in the completion of M.A. theses. Among those who have benefitted from his work are local groups such as the Memphis Arts Council, Leadership Memphis, the Shelby County Historical Commission, the West Tennessee Historical Society, the Tennessee Historical Society, and the Tennessee Humanities Council. At the national level, besides the Oral History Association, he has been involved with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Organization of American Historians. He has put in many hours as an editor or reader for university presses in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, and Georgia. He also served as a consultant to the American Red Cross when it undertook an oral history of its beginnings. I have known Professor Crawford since the beginning of my political career and have been the beneficiary of his wisdom and friendship. I congratulate him on his long, distinguished and continuing career as an historian and wish him all the best when and if he ever retires.
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