[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 178 (Thursday, November 17, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1167]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




CONGRATULATING PROFESSOR CHARLES CRAWFORD ON 60 YEARS AT THE UNIVERSITY 
                               OF MEMPHIS

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                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 17, 2022

  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a great 
professor, historian and my friend, Charles W. Crawford, who was 
recently recognized by the University of Memphis for teaching 60 years 
in its History Department. Professor Crawford, whose Tennessee: Land, 
History and Government (1984) and its 1990 update, Dynamic Tennessee, 
served as high school textbooks for most students across our state for 
decades, also has the distinction of having taught Tennessee history to 
future Tennessee Congressman, Senator and Vice President Al Gore in the 
summer before Gore's senior year at Harvard. Professor Crawford's first 
of 20 published books was an illustrated history of his adopted city, 
Yesterday's Memphis (1976) and he wrote the history of the local 
National Bank of Commerce on its 120th anniversary. Professor Crawford 
was a favorite interview for many journalists and authors and he served 
as a consultant on many media projects, including the 1984 documentary 
film ``The Old Forest'' and commentary on the local public television 
station, WQED. A native of rural north-central Arkansas, where he still 
has a home, Professor Crawford, 91, received a bachelor's degree from 
then-Harding College (now University) in Searcy, Arkansas, a master's 
from the University of Arkansas, and a Ph.D. from the University of 
Mississippi, all in history. He started teaching as a graduate 
assistant at Ole Miss and began as an assistant professor at then-
Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) in 1962. In 1967, the 
university's president, Cecil C. Humphreys, asked him to start its Oral 
History Project, and he has subsequently conducted or overseen more 
than 2000 interviews, including with military veterans, experts on the 
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Mississippi River 
flood of 1937, and a lot of politicians, and served as president of the 
national Oral History Association. As a professor, he has directed 
students in completing 38 doctoral dissertations and 68 students in the 
completion of M.A. theses. Among those who have benefitted from his 
work are local groups such as the Memphis Arts Council, Leadership 
Memphis, the Shelby County Historical Commission, the West Tennessee 
Historical Society, the Tennessee Historical Society, and the Tennessee 
Humanities Council. At the national level, besides the Oral History 
Association, he has been involved with the National Endowment for the 
Humanities and the Organization of American Historians. He has put in 
many hours as an editor or reader for university presses in Tennessee, 
Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, and Georgia. He also served 
as a consultant to the American Red Cross when it undertook an oral 
history of its beginnings. I have known Professor Crawford since the 
beginning of my political career and have been the beneficiary of his 
wisdom and friendship. I congratulate him on his long, distinguished 
and continuing career as an historian and wish him all the best when 
and if he ever retires.

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