# Southern History Association

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{{Distinguish|Southern Historical Society|Southern Historical Association}}
The '''Southern History Association''' was a short-lived professional American organization of historians who studied the [American South](/source/American_South). The organization was founded in 1896, at the time of the [Southern Renaissance](/source/Southern_Renaissance), when a need for professionalization among historians in the United States gave rise to a more scientific treatment of history.

The organization was founded in Washington, D. C., in 1896, and many of its members were not academically employed. Founders included historians [William K. Boyd](/source/William_K._Boyd) from Trinity College (now [Duke University](/source/Duke_University)) and [Richard Heath Dabney](/source/Richard_Heath_Dabney) from the [University of Virginia](/source/University_of_Virginia), and literary scholar [William Peterfield Trent](/source/William_Peterfield_Trent), from [Sewanee](/source/Sewanee%3A_The_University_of_the_South). They published a well-regarded journal, ''Publications of the Southern History Association'', and were hoping to organize conferences and attract a broad audience. However, the association never managed to gain such an audience or the necessary institutional support, and never had more than 250 members. The articles published in the ''Publications'' were "dry as dust" and focused more on America as a whole and the idea of nation-building, rather than on the South, and according to its own editor, [Colyer Meriwether](/source/Colyer_Meriwether), was unable to reach a more popular Southern audience. By the end of 1907, the association had ceased to be.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Southern Historical Association: Seventy-five Years of History 'in the South' and 'of the South' |first=Bethany L. |last=Johnson |journal=[The Journal of Southern History](/source/The_Journal_of_Southern_History) |year=2010 |volume=76 |issue=3 |pages=655–682 |jstor=25700143 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25700143}}</ref>

==References==
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==External links==
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000495299 ''Publications of the Southern History Association''] at [HathiTrust](/source/HathiTrust)

{{Southern U.S. historical societies}}

Category:Organizations established in 1896
Category:Historical societies of the United States
Category:History of the Southern United States
Category:American historians

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Southern History Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_History_Association) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_History_Association?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.