Leon Litwack honored with new speaker series

January 31, 2025

by Alexander Rony

UC Berkeley’s Department of History is recognizing one of its most beloved professors with a new speaker series devoted to African American history. The series extends the legacy of Leon Litwack, a trailblazing scholar who taught generations of students to peer behind the curtain of whitewashed narratives and learn difficult truths about their country’s past.

Few areas of scholarship are as contentious — and consequential — as African American history. Litwack shifted the common approach to Reconstruction-era history by emphasizing the perspectives of freedpeople following emancipation. Previously, the overwhelmingly white historian corps frequently treated enslaved and free African Americans as unnamed cameos without agency in their retrospectives on slavery.

The new speaker series will expose Berkeley scholars to thought-provoking ideas, building on the Leon Litwack Prize for African-American History.

"It's important to understand where this hate comes from"

Kate Kuisel won the Leon Litwack Prize in 2024 for her paper “The Boundaries of Beauty: Black Beauty Culture as a Class Struggle.” When she was in high school, a white supremacist killed nine congregants at a Black church in her Charleston, South Carolina neighborhood. The traumatic experience demonstrated to Kuisel how society had failed to reconcile with its past.

“It's important to understand where this hate comes from and why people want to warp this history if there are going to be changes,” said Kuisel.

Kuisel’s educational upbringing often led her to feel she was being steered away from the real history of race relations in the state. She recalled sanitized field trips to former plantations. While studying at the University of South Carolina, state legislators tried to pass a bill that would have severely restricted college lessons on slavery and race. She testified against the legislation, helping to defeat it for the time being.

Kuisel is now pursuing her Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley. She has focused much of her academic research on how the American beauty industry markets its products to Black audiences. The Black beauty industry generated many fortunes in the 20th century, but a corporate takeover of small businesses has affected Black wealth, culture, and self-identification.

Launched in 2023, the Leon Litwack Prize recognizes superb writing and research by two UC Berkeley scholars of African American history — an undergraduate and a graduate student. The award comes with a modest sum of money, but for Kuisel, the main benefit was psychological.

“I'm one of the few members of my cohort without a master's degree,” said Kuisel. “I came straight from undergrad at a big SEC (Southeastern Conference) school not known for its academics, and I struggled a bit with imposter syndrome. Receiving this award helped me feel accepted in academia.”

Kuisel got the opportunity to meet Litwack’s widow, Rhoda, an experience Kuisel said humanized the award and its namesake. “It made this award feel so much more valuable to me,” said Kuisel.

Bolstered by the award, Kuisel has expanded her research in new directions. She is now working on the history of asbestos in the American built environment, adding context to a major health hazard rarely discussed in terms of race.

"He was absolutely in the right field"

Litwack taught over 30,000 students during his decades-long career at UC Berkeley. He delivered famous, well-attended lectures in his signature American history course. Local journalists even covered his final lecture.

His background as a child of Jewish immigrants living in a working-class neighborhood led him to seek out the hidden narratives of Americans frequently excluded from his textbooks, including African Americans, Native Americans, union workers, civil rights activists, and women. He once contested a problematic high school history lesson by presenting a rebuttal inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois.

“He was political at such an early age,” said Rhoda Litwack. “He was always thinking of the people who were left out. He was absolutely in the right field.”

Leon Litwack arrived at campus in the 1950s, receiving his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in history at UC Berkeley. A student protestor who refused to sign a loyalty oath, he was fired from his campus library job and later subpoenaed by the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities. He joined Berkeley’s faculty when the university was hiring young academics with new ideas. The cultural ethos of social justice in the 1960s suited Litwack well, and he helped break down social barriers between students and faculty. The Litwacks invited students into their home to celebrate completed dissertations and the end of their undergraduate seminar. Faculty members would come over and dance to rock ’n’ roll.

Litwack’s first book — 1961’s North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 — helped shape a collective reconsideration of racism in northern states. He won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and the 1981 National Book Award for Been In the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. The book drew on Litwack’s extensive study of obscure archives, presenting first-person accounts from formerly enslaved people.

Litwack shaped his students, who decades later would stop to introduce themselves after spotting him in Berkeley or at an academic conference. Given the size and nature of his lecture classes, he may not have remembered everyone’s name, but he was always interested in their life’s journey.

“They would come and tell him how much they enjoyed his class and how it was the best class they ever had,” said Rhoda Litwack. “He never bragged about it. He was a generous and warm man, a great listener, and a wonderful person.”

Leon Litwack particularly enjoyed teaching undergraduates who had yet to experience a comprehensive and challenging examination of U.S. history. Students, in turn, loved Litwack. He won two Distinguished Teaching Awards — UC Berkeley’s highest honor for instruction — and a Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC).

Rhoda proudly referred to her husband’s former pupils as the Litwacks’ “academic family.” Generations of former students left UC Berkeley to forge their own intellectual path, often becoming mentors to younger alums. These scholars continue Litwack’s legacy by teaching and publishing hard truths about American history.

Two women wearing glasses smile while seated at a restaurant table

Kate Kuisel and Rhoda Litwack met at the Faculty Club.

A book cover with an illustration of Black Americans walking and riding animals past a white crowd

Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long won a Pullitzer Prize.

"I miss him like hell"

Amy Lippert, a graduate student instructor for Litwack, noted that the professor saved the prized spot in his home — a domed alcove with an expansive view of the San Francisco Bay — for the books his students published.

“Those were his treasures: all the intellectual gifts that they brought into the world, with Leon as the midwife,” said Lippert, who described the professor as a hero, mentor, and friend. “So many of those authors would testify that were it not for Leon, there wouldn’t have been a book — or certainly not the same book.”

“The pages of history are littered with wildly talented individuals who were also colossally flawed in various ways,” continued Lippert. “Leon was exceptional because, while he practiced his craft at a very high level, he was also a wonderful human being who actually practiced what he preached. He wanted to know what his students really thought. He would earnestly consult you about the reading list for a class and which song we should play before he walked on stage.”

“I miss him like hell, and I always will,” said Lippert.

Litwack’s admirers recalled his strong sense of humor, remarkable storytelling ability, rip-roaring laugh, strategic use of profanity, and genuine interest in those around him. His deep well of empathy strengthened his resolve to set the record straight through oral and written arguments. He would stay up into the early morning before class, reworking a lecture he had delivered dozens of times. After delivering his new version, he would eagerly ask his graduate seminar for feedback.

“He taught me that being a historian meant being a teacher as well as a research scholar,” said James Grossman, the American Historical Association’s executive director and a graduate student of Litwack’s. “To Professor Litwack, there was no such thing as a public intellectual. All of us were taught that we can and should communicate with a wide variety of people.”

“He also emphasized,” continued Grossman, “that our goal as historians is to communicate how other people understood their time and place and why that matters in terms of historical development. Historians listen to our sources; we don't put our theories into their minds. We listen to voices, and we listen to silences.”

Litwack loudly defended the right to dissent, arguing that few people have cared more deeply about the United States than its most vocal critics. He wanted to see the country realize its frequently extolled values of freedom, prosperity, and equality. In his view, historical analysis could help close the gap between aspiration and reality by revealing why current social inequities exist.

“History teaches, after all, that it is not the rebels, the iconoclasts, the curious, the dissidents who endanger a democratic society,” Litwack said in a 2001 interview, “but rather the accepting, the unthinking, the unquestioning, the docile, the obedient, the silent, and the indifferent.”

A man in a dark leather jacket gestures with his right hand

Leon Litwack speaks at the Berkeley Writers at Work lecture series in 2002. (Photo by Noah Berger)

Historians listen to our sources; we don't put our theories into their minds. We listen to voices, and we listen to silences.

James Grossman

"We're at a critical point in American life"

In December, a former student of Litwack’s decided to honor their former professor by creating the Leon Litwack Speakers Series. The goal is to bring students, faculty, and even alums together to discuss lessons from African American history — including some of the most pressing issues of the day.

Waldo Martin, a UC Berkeley professor of African American history, thinks the speaker series will be an enormous contribution to the department. Comparable institutions — including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and UCLA — have endowed series on African American history and culture. These events increase the universities’ academic prestige and community awareness.

Martin first met Litwack as a graduate student in the 1970s. He had decided to attend Berkeley for his doctorate on the strength of the university’s African American history program, which was led at the time by four professors: Litwack, Winthrop Jordan, Lawrence Levine, and Kenneth Stampp.

Like Kuisel, Martin experienced a culture clash moving from the South to Berkeley. Martin’s upbringing encouraged him to be formal and polite, referring to others by title or degree. Litwack — never one for power imbalances — told Martin to use his first name.

“He was a regular guy,” said Martin. “I was all of 22, but I’ll never forget that story. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a professor; I fell into that. Leon was a mover and a shaker in terms of helping to develop and grow the field.”

Martin hopes that the award and seminar series attract aspiring historians to UC Berkeley, just as he was drawn to UC Berkeley by Litwack’s scholarship many years ago. Martin is planning his retirement soon, but he feels the top-ranked department is in good hands. The field has diversified, and professors like Stephanie Jones-Rogers and Dylan Penningroth are making their names through innovative research.

Still, misinformation around African American history persists, and the field is often underfunded.

“I think we’re at a critical point in American life,” said the former student who sponsored the speaker series. “If we’re not historically illiterate as a nation, we’re certainly historically lacking.”

UC Berkeley, as always, is countering with knowledge. The Leon Litwack Award and Speakers Series advance that fundamental mission.

A man stands in front of a famous photo of Huey P. Newton

Waldo Martin was Litwack's student, colleague, and friend.

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