John Spencer Bassett

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John Spencer Bassett in 1891

John Spencer Bassett (September 10, 1867 – January 27, 1928) was an American historian. He was a professor at Duke University (then Trinity College) best known today for initiating the Bassett Affair in 1903.

Biography

Bassett was born September 10, 1867 in Tarboro, North Carolina.[1] He entered Trinity College (now Duke University) in 1886, as a junior, graduating with an A.B. in history. In 1894 he earned a Ph.D in history from Johns Hopkins University, under the direction of Herbert Baxter Adams. He became a professor at Smith College in 1906.[2] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1921.[3] Bassett died 27 January 1928 in Washington, DC.


John Spencer Bassett was the second of seven children of Richard Baxter Bassett (son of Richard and Caroline Spencer Bassett) who was born September 20, 1832 in Williamsburg, Virginia and died March 25, 1902 in Goldsboro, North Carolina; and Mary Jane Wilson (daughter of John Wilson and Susannah Dunn of Maine) born November 7, 1845 in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, and died September 1, 1903 in Durham, North Carolina. Both of his parents are buried in Willow Dale Cemetery in Goldsboro, Wayne County, North Carolina.

In Forsyth, North Carolina on August 10, 1892, John Spencer Bassett married Jessie Lewellin. She was born January 31, 1866 in Clarksville, Mecklenburg County, Virginia; died April 3, 1950 in Northampton, Massachusetts. John Spencer Bassett and Jessie Lewellin Bassett are buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery, Northampton, Massachusetts. They had two children Richard Horace Bassett and Margaret Byrd Bassett.

The Bassett Affair

President Roosevelt praised the university.

In 1902 Bassett launched the South Atlantic Quarterly, a journal whose purpose was to promote the "literary, historical, and social development of the South."[4] It was from this journal that Bassett began to challenge more aggressively the southern press and prevailing sentiments about southern history and issues revolving around race. In October 1903 he published an article in the South Atlantic Quarterly entitled "Stirring Up the Fires of Racial Antipathy" triggering a controversy that nearly cost the young professor his job. In the article, he spoke about improving race relations and gave praise to numerous African Americans. Near the end of the article, he wrote "...Booker T. Washington [is] the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in a hundred years..." This led to an outpouring of anger from powerful Democratic Party leaders as well as the media and public. The most vociferous of which was the Raleigh News and Observer and its editor, Josephus Daniels. Many demanded that Bassett be fired and encouraged parents to take their children out of the university. Due to immense public pressure, Bassett offered his resignation if the Board of Trustees requested that he do so. The Board of Trustees then held a meeting to decide the fate of Bassett. In the end, they voted 18-7 not to accept the resignation citing academic freedom. In their decision, they wrote, "We are particularly unwilling to lend ourselves to any tendency to destroy or limit academic liberty, a tendency which has, within recent years, manifested itself in some conspicuous instances, and which has created a feeling of uneasiness for the welfare of American colleges [...] We cannot lend countenance to the degrading notion that professors in American colleges have not an equal liberty of thought and speech with all other Americans." In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt commended Trinity and Bassett's courageous stand for academic freedom while speaking to the university. He told the school, "You stand for Academic Freedom, for the right of private judgment, for a duty more incumbent upon the scholar than upon any other man, to tell the truth as he sees it, to claim for himself and to give to others the largest liberty in seeking after the truth."

Trivia

  • A freshman residence hall on Duke's East Campus is named for Bassett.

References

  1. ↑ "John Spencer Bassett, 1867-1928". Documenting the American South. University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved May 20, 2011. 
  2. ↑ "Action, Objectivity and the Bassett Affair". Duke Libraries: University Archives. Retrieved May 20, 2011. 
  3. ↑ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 20, 2011. 
  4. ↑ http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/exhibits/academic-freedom/bassettaffair.html

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