Historian, feminist and champion of poor and ethnic minorities, Carl Neumann Degler devoted his career to questioning old ways of thinking. The Pulitzer Prize-winning professor and author researched and wrote about affirmative action, women’s rights, slavery and racism.
Degler, who taught history at Stanford from 1968 until retiring in 1990, died at his home in Palo Alto on December 27. He was 93.
Degler was born in Newark, N.J., and graduated from Upsala College in 1942. After serving as a weather observer with the Army Air Forces in India during World War II, he earned both a master’s degree and doctorate in American history from Columbia University. It was there he met his first wife, Catherine Grady; they were married for 50 years until her death in 1998. Starting in 1952, he taught at Vassar College before joining Stanford’s faculty.
Throughout his life, Degler studied groups and issues he felt had not been adequately explored, digging into the history of the American South, race relations in Brazil and the United States, and Darwinism and its influence on American culture. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1972 for his book Neither Black Nor White, which compared the origins of slavery and race relations in Brazil and America. He chose Brazil because he believed it was the New World country that most resembled the United States both in size and in terms of the significance of slavery in its development.
Degler became a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, invited to join by feminist leader Betty Friedan. His best-known book on women’s history, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (1980), examined the conflict between women’s need for autonomy and the responsibilities of family life. His wife of 14 years, Therese Baker-Degler, an academic sociologist and one of the first professors at CSU-San Marcos, said, “We had a great relationship because of our shared interest in inequality as well as other common ideas and values.”
Jack Rakove, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford and Degler’s former colleague, said, “Carl took a truly broad view of American history. While most historians settle down and follow one period, he had a certain kind of intellectual restlessness. His experience being stationed in India during World War II really sparked his interest in women and society and the way women were viewed in everyday life.”
Among his other books, Degler wrote Out of Our Past, which is still used in many AP U.S. History classes. He served as president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association.
Degler is survived by his wife, Therese; children, Paul and Suzanne; stepsons, Julian and Felix Baker; and four grandchildren.
Julie Muller Mitchell, '79, is a writer in San Francisco.
