Otis L. Graham Jr.

Founding Board Chairman

Otis L. Graham, Jr. was a Professor Emeritus of History at UCSB, and Visiting Scholar at UNC Chapel Hill who was the Center's founding chairman and sole founder.

He graduated from Yale University (B.A., 1957) and Columbia University (PhD, 1966), and served as an artillery officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was the author or editor of nineteen books and numerous articles on the history of the United States, especially on American reform movements, political economy, and environment and immigration. He was been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Advanced Study and Behavioral Sciences, and received the Robert Kelley Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History.

He passed away in 2017.