Hubert D. Humphreys

Hubert Davis Humphreys (April 21, 1923 – August 28, 2009) was an historian formerly affiliated with Louisiana State University in Shreveport who specialized in archives, oral history, and studies of his native North Louisiana.

Background and military service

Humphreys was born to Ralph and Ellie Humphreys in the village of Grayson in Caldwell Parish south of Monroe. He graduated in 1940 from Grayson High School and then joined the Civilian Conservation Corps two years prior to its abolition. He studied briefly at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. In 1942, he accepted employment with the United States Army Corps of Engineers until in 1943 he joined the United States Navy for three and a half years of World War II duty. Humphreys served under Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill’s Fifth Amphibious Force and fought in the Pacific Theatre: the invasion of Pelletier (Palau Island), Iwo Jima, Saipan (in the Marianas Islands), and Okinawa, the most costly of the naval battles to the United States. He served on the USS Auburn at the time of the surrender of Nagasaki, Japan. He was awarded three battle stars and numerous citations.^[1][2]

Education

Humphreys was discharged from the Navy at New Orleans. He then entered Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge under the GI Bill of Rights.^[1] There in 1950, he received a Bachelor of Science in professional education. In 1953, he received a Master of Education from Texas A&M University in College Station.^[3] He then obtained a Master of Arts in the field of history from LSU.^[4] His master's thesis on the Civilian Conservation Corps was printed in a condensed version in Louisiana History, the journal of the Louisiana Historical Association.^[3]

Humphreys subsequently engaged in advanced studies under grants at Harvard University, Tulane University in New Orleans, Long Island University in New York City, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. In 1974, he received archival training at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the Georgia State Archives. Under Fulbright-Hays Scholarship grants, he studied in Lebanon in 1967 and in Southeast Asia in 1970.^[1] His historical interest was particularly strong in the areas of U.S. diplomacy and Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.^[3]

Academic accomplishments

Humphreys spent thirty-three years as an educator in Louisiana, with his first assignment in Webster Parish and then Fair Park High School in Shreveport, where in 1965, he was named "Teacher of the Year".^[4] In 1967, Humphreys became one of the charter faculty of LSU in Shreveport,^[5] having taught history there until his retirement in 1985. In 1980, he published Louisiana Oral History Collections: A Directory. He also wrote numerous journal articles, two on the second removal of the Red River Raft of 1875. He published another article on Lula Wardlow of Montgomery in Grant Parish, the first elected woman mayor in Louisiana and a minister in Humphreys' own Methodist Protestant Church, since part of the United Methodist denomination. He wrote articles too on some of the Methodist Protestant circuit riders in Louisiana. He wrote many book reviews and newspaper columns. In 1978, he was elected president of the Louisiana Historical Association.^[6] In 1995, the LHA named him a fellow.^[3]

He was affiliated with the North Louisiana Historical Association, Louisiana Association of Social Studies, National Council of Social Studies, Southern Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, American Association of University Professors, Phi Alpha Theta, Society of Southwest Archivists, Oral History Association, and the Louisiana Bicentennial Commission.^[1] He combined archival and oral history in a study of the Carpenter's Union, funded by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.^[3]

After retirement, Humphreys researched the history of his native Grayson and the Methodist Protestant Church. In 1992, his history of Grayson was published in a lengthy articles in The Journal of the North Louisiana Historical Association, since renamed North Louisiana History, and based in Shreveport. In 2007, LSUS authorized "The Hubert Humphreys Endowed Professorship of History" in the College of Liberal Arts. On retirement, Humphreys was named an LSUS professor emeritus.^[1]

Death and legacy

Humphreys retired in Shreveport but died in Baton Rouge, where he had spent his latter days. Survivors included two sisters, Mildred H. Taylor of Baton Rouge and Melissa Verna Douglas and husband, George W. Douglas, of Shreveport. Services were held on September 5, 2009, in Columbia, the seat of Caldwell Parish. Interment was at Welcome Home Cemetery in Grayson.^[1] At the time of his death, Humphreys was writing a history on the Copenhagen Prairie area near Grayson, an area that he had explored as a child.^[3]

References