SHENTON, James P(atrick) 1925-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 17, 1925, in Passaic, NJ; died of complications following heart surgery July 25, 2003, in Paterson, NJ. Educator and author. Shenton was a history professor at Columbia University who specialized in nineteenth-and twentieth-century American history. After serving in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Europe during World War II, he attended Columbia, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1954. After completing his master's degree there, though, he was already on the university's faculty as an associate professor of history; and he was promoted to full professor of American history in 1967. A pacifist who supported the civil rights movement, Shenton participated in the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, and in 1968 was accosted by police for trying to keep officers away from protesting students. Shenton's love and concern for his students was obvious throughout his tenure, and he spent more hours in the classroom than most of his academic colleagues, teaching during the summer and also lecturing for a lengthy course on U.S. history broadcast on television as The Rise of the American Nation. Shenton was the author or editor of several books in his field, among them History of the United States to 1865 (1963), History of the United States from 1865 to the Present (1964), and These United States (1978). When he was not in the classroom, Shenton could be found conducting walking tours of New York City, educating the interested public in the history of sites such as Ellis Island.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Writers Directory, 12th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, July 28, 2003, p. A19.