Oliver Cromwell Carmichael: A Casualty of Neutrality

• In Event: 52.084 - Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 52.084-5 - Biography as Educational History

Abstract

Oliver Cromwell Carmichael was a Southern moderate who was the president of the University of Alabama during a time where the entire South was in conflict with the Brown vs. Board of Education decisions. Carmichael’s failure as president of the University of Alabama boils down to this question: How could a man, with so much experience, a man that was known as one of the greatest educators and administrators the state of Alabama had ever produced, fail at the job he had waited half his life for? This study explores the answer to that question as well as analyzes what attributes made a president in the South successful or unsuccessful at desegregating their university in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Author

• Sarah Elizabeth Wever, The University of Alabama