Franklin Roosevelt historian Frank Burt Freidel Jr. was the second scholar to hold the Bullitt Chair in American History at the University of Washington. He occupied the chair from 1981 to 1986. Freidel began his academic career during the war-torn 1940s teaching for brief periods of time at Shurtleff College in Illinois, at the University of Maryland in College Park, at Pennsylvania State University, at Vassar, the University of Illinois, and Stanford (1953-1955) before settling at Harvard (1955-1981) where he remained until retirement. Although he authored over a dozen books, Freidel is most well-known for his six-volume biography of Franklin Roosevelt which includes Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship (1952), Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal (1954), Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Triumph (1956), Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (1973), F.D.R. and the South (1966), and Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous With Destiny (1990).
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 22, 1916, Freidel later moved to California where he earned his B.A. (1937) and M.A. (1939) from the University of Southern California. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1942. At Harvard, Freidel was the Charles Warren Professor of American History from 1972 to 1981. Significantly he also pioneered a course in African American history at Harvard which eventually led to the formation of the school’s African American Studies program. Besides his work on Franklin Roosevelt, some of Freidel’s other works include Splendid Little War (1958), a pictorial history of the Spanish-American War, the two volume A History of the United States (1959) and America in the Twentieth Century (1960). Freidel also edited the third edition of the Harvard Guide to American History which was released in 1970. The first edition had been prepared by Edward Channing, A. B. Hart and Frederick Jackson Turner in 1906.
During his career Freidel also served as president of the Organization of American Historians, (OAH) in 1975-1976, president of the New England History Teachers' Association, and president of the New England Historical Association (1966-1967). Freidel was working on a seventh volume on Roosevelt when he died on January 25, 1993 at Harvard University’s Stillman Infirmary in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 76. In 1997 the Leipzig University in Germany created the Frank Freidel Memorial Library, named in his honor, which houses the university’s American studies collection, begun with over 2,000 volumes from Freidel’s personal library.
Sources:
“Frank Freidel Memorial Library,” American Studies Leipzig, http://americanstudies.uni-leipzig.de/scholarship/frank_freidel_library; Eric Pace, “Frank Freidel Biographer of F.D. R. Is Dead at 76,” The New York Times, 26 January, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/26/us/frank-freidel-biographer-of-fdr-is-... “Memorial Minutes,” Faculty of Arts and Sciences/Harvard University, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~secfas/Memminutes.html; “Past Officers Organization of American Historians,” Organization of American Historians, http://www.oah.org/about/pastofcrs.html, “Presidents of the New England Historical Association,” New England Historical Association, http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEHA/presidents.htm.
Authored by:
Deborah McNally, University of Washington, Seattle
