Stanley Elkins
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Stanley M. Elkins is as of 2004 the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of history at Smith College. He was one of the first academics to write about slavery in the United States, examining the effects on the slaves and their descendants. His arguments in the 1959 Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, (which are controversial, and in fact not widely accepted today) are that the process of slavery made the black people relate to the dominant white slaveowners rather as children relate to their parents. He claimed that black slaves were subjected to totalitarian treatment, and prevented from having their own culture, and that a culture of dependency was created that still existed a century later. Elkins' views were influential during the late 1960's when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an advisor to United States President Richard M. Nixon, supported Affirmative action programs in order to counteract the lingering effects of slavery on black culture.
Elkins's assessment of black slavery in the United States as an infantilizing and totalitarian institution was influenced by the experience of Jews who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. He fought in the United States Army in World War II.
Initially Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life was heralded by the black community as an important and positive contribution, but subsequently the comparison of black slavery and Nazi concentration camps was considered offensive by many descendants of both oppressed groups. The controversy is discussed by Ann Lane in her 1971 book: The Debate Over Slavery, Stanley Elkins and His Critics.
Elkins was one of the first historians to draw heavily on sociological studies.
Elkins is also the author (with the late Eric McKitrick) of the 1993 The Age of Federalism, 1788-1800, which was the winner of the 1994 Bancroft Prize. The book discusses the relationships among key players like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, as well as the larger political narrative of the administrations of George Washington and John Adams.
