Daniel, Pete 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born November 24, 1938, in Rocky Mount, NC; son of Peter Edward and Stella Daniel; married Bonnie Sullivan, June 11, 1961 (divorced, 1972); children: Elizabeth Anne, Laura Elaine. Education: Wake Forest College (now University), B.A., 1961, M.A., 1962; University of Maryland, Ph.D., 1970. Hobbies and other interests: Photography.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Washington, DC. Office—National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560.

CAREER:

University of North Carolina at Wilmington, instructor in history, 1963-66; University of Maryland, College Park, assistant editor of Booker T. Washington papers, 1969-70; University of Tennessee, Knoxville, assistant professor, 1971-73, associate professor, 1973-77, professor of history, 1978; U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, legislative aide to Senator Robert B. Morgan, 1979-81; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC, curator/supervisor, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 1982-94, curator, Division of the History of Technology, 1994—. Visiting professor, University of Massachusetts, 1974-75.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, American Studies Association, Organization of American Historians, Southern Historical Association, Agricultural History Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Louis Pelzer Prize, Organization of American Historians, 1970, for "Up from Slavery and Down to Peonage: The Alonzo Bailey Case"; National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 1970-71, 1978-79, stipend, 1974; American Philosophical Society grant, 1975; Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars fellowship, 1981-82; Herbert Feis Award, American Historical Association, 1985; Charles S. Sydnor Prize, Southern Historical Association, 1986; Regents' fellowship, Smithsonian Institution, 1994-95; Elliott Rudwick Prize, Organization of American Historians, 2001.

WRITINGS:

The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1972.

(Assistant editor, with others) Louis R. Harlan, senior editor, The Booker T. Washington Papers, Volume II, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1972.

(With Raymond Smock) A Talent for Detail: The Photographs of Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1889-1910, Harmony (New York, NY), 1974.

Deep'n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi Flood, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1977, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AR), 1996.

Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1984.

Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life since 1900, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1986, published as Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1996.

(With others) Official Images: New Deal Photography, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1987.

(Editor) The Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1901-1945, University Publications of America (Frederick, MD), 1989.

Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2000.

Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South, Louisiana State University Press in association with Smithsonian Institution (Baton Rouge, LA), 2005.

Member of board of editorial advisors, Booker T. Washington papers. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Journal of American History.

SIDELIGHTS:

A curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History for more than two decades, Pete Daniel has made good use of the documents and photographs in the museum's extensive collection. Daniel writes on southern history in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on racial and demographic issues. His background as an agricultural expert for the Smithsonian informs his work, as does his personal interest in southern music and NASCAR racing.

Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s contests the notion that southern states were in a period of calm during the decade following World War II. Instead, Daniel describes an era marked by racial tensions, massive migration to the cities, agricultural transformation, and challenges—both legal and moral—to the white middle class. Daniel also explores how early rock and roll fused cultural influences from blacks and whites, and he traces the birth of stock car racing as a popular sport for a working-class population deprived of its rural roots. Daniel writes that rock and roll could have been a catalyst toward integration, as was unionization in the cities, but that both of these forces confronted a white power structure unwilling to change.

According to Andra Whitworth in the New York Times Book Review, Lost Revolutions is "opinionated, but backed by research and persuasively argued … a critical examination of opportunity lost." Library Journal reviewer Charles C. Hay likewise deemed Lost Revolutions as "provocative, well-written, and thoroughly researched." In a piece for Creative Loafing Online, Frye Gaillard questioned the "black-and-white reality of squandered opportunity" Daniel presents. Nevertheless, Gaillard commended Lost Revolutions as "a broad and intelligent account of the South at a critical moment in its history." Patricia Sullivan of the Wilson Quarterly said that Daniel "brilliantly depicts the people who shaped southern life in the 1950s."

Daniel's next work, Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South, addresses the issue of public policy versus special interest groups. Government officials are frequently torn between pushing through legislation that is best for the environment and pressing for less stringent regulations that provide industries with more freedom—motivated by large donations made by the industries in question. Daniel looks into these issues in Toxic Drift, focusing on the links between the chemical industry and the United States Department of Agriculture in the years following World War II. David Rosner, reviewing the title for the Environmental History Online, concluded that "this is a rich and close study of one government agency and its relationship to an ever-expanding and largely uncontrolled industry."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 2000, Vanessa Bush, review of Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s, p. 1427.

Library Journal, April 15, 2000, Charles C. Hay, review of Lost Revolutions, p. 104.

New York Times Book Review, August 20, 2000, Andra Whitworth, review of Lost Revolutions.

Wilson Quarterly, spring, 2000, Patricia Sullivan, review of Lost Revolutions, p. 132.

ONLINE

Creative Loafing Online,http://www.creativeloafing.com/ (May 27, 2000), Frye Gaillard, "Song of the South."

Environmental History Online,http://www.historycooperative.org/ (January 21, 2008), David Rosner, review of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South.