author
Walter L. (Walter Lynwood) Fleming
1874–1932
A leading early historian of the American South, he wrote widely on Reconstruction and helped shape how that era was studied in the early 20th century. His work was influential in its time and is now read with attention to both its scholarship and its strong ideological point of view.
2 Audiobooks
The Sequel of Appomattox: A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States
by Walter L. (Walter Lynwood) Fleming
Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama
by Walter L. (Walter Lynwood) Fleming
About the author
Born in Brundidge, Alabama, in 1874, Walter Lynwood Fleming became an American historian known for his studies of the South and the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. He studied at Alabama Polytechnic Institute and later earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he worked under historian William A. Dunning.
Fleming taught at West Virginia University, Louisiana State University, and Vanderbilt University, and he also held major academic leadership roles, including dean and graduate-school administrator. His books and essays focused on Southern history, slavery, and Reconstruction, and he was widely recognized in his day as an important scholar in those fields.
Today, Fleming is closely associated with the Dunning School, a group of historians whose interpretations of Reconstruction were highly influential for decades but have since been sharply criticized for their racial bias and sympathy toward the Lost Cause view of Southern history. That makes his work historically significant not only for what it says about the past, but also for what it reveals about the assumptions of his own era.