Postdoctoral Fellow in African-American History at Carleton College
About
Tyran Steward is a historian of African-American and modern US history, with a particular interest in American political and social history. Specifically, his research explores black politics, popular culture, and race relations during the 20th century. Dr. Steward completed his PhD at the Ohio State University under the generous support of several prestigious fellowships and grants, including the Presidential Fellowship.
Current Work:
Dr. Steward is currently working on his first book titled, The Benching of Willis Ward: The Making of a Black Conservative in the Jim Crow North. The study explores black conservatism and northern racial liberalism primarily through the lens of sport by examining the de facto practice of benching black athletes in the early 20th Century — a tactic that was often deployed when integrated northern schools competed against southern teams. This book uses Willis Ward's 1934 benching against Georgia Tech specifically to examine the racial social order that existed in the North during the American Interwar Period and to scrutinize the effects the incident had on his career as a judge, lawyer, and personnel director for the Ford Motor Company. The critical intervention here is that the study brings the relatively unexplored world of sport into focus, demonstrating how in the fine grain, materiality of everyday life or even recreation, fascinating sites of racial hierarchy, political reimagining, social retrenchment, and struggle existed.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Sociology; history
