David T. Beito
Encyclopedia
David T. Beito is a historian and professor of history at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

. He is the author of Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (1989); From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (2000); The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (2002); and Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (2009) which was co-authored by Professor Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito is chair of the department of social sciences at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.-Biography:Beito was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She earned her Ph.D...

 of Stillman College
Stillman College
-Marching Band:The school's marching band is named the Blue Pride Marching Band.In February 2010, Stillman College dedicated the brand new facility, the Thomas Lyle Band Center, named in honor of former band director Thomas Lyle, in conjunction with the Wynn Fine Arts Center.Organizations include:...

). Black Maverick is a biography of civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 leader, surgeon, entrepreneur and self-help advocate, T.R.M. Howard, who was a mentor to Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi...

 and Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader....

, and was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

, and other publications.

Beito is the founder and one of the key contributors to the group weblog Liberty and Power
Liberty and Power
Liberty and Power is a group weblog established in 2003 and is part of the History News Network of the Center for History and New Media. The members share a libertarian or classical liberal perspective. They are primarily university professors and represent diverse fields. Past guest bloggers have...

, which is located at the History News Network
History News Network
History News Network is a project of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Although the HNN resides on GMU's server, it operates independently of the university as a non-profit corporation registered in Washington State...

.

Beito was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...

. He received a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in history from the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

 in 1980 and a Ph.D in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 in 1986. Since 1994, he has taught at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

, where he is a professor in history. He married Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito
Linda Royster Beito is chair of the department of social sciences at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.-Biography:Beito was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She earned her Ph.D...

 on June 11, 1997 and they live in Northport, Alabama
Northport, Alabama
Northport is a city in Tuscaloosa County in the west central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. Located on the Black Warrior River across from downtown Tuscaloosa, it is currently the 24th largest city in Alabama with an estimated population of 23,442 in 2009...

.

Beito’s research covers a wide range of topics in American history including race, tax revolt
Tax revolt
A tax revolt is a political struggle to repeal, limit, or roll back a tax.-1930s, The Great Depression:In the United States, the term "tax revolt" is sometimes used to refer to a series of anti-tax state initiative campaigns. The first significant wave of these campaigns was during the 1930s. The...

s, the private provision of infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...

, mutual aid, and the political philosophies of Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

, Rose Wilder Lane
Rose Wilder Lane
Rose Wilder Lane was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist...

, and Isabel Paterson
Isabel Paterson
Isabel Paterson was a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism...

.

Beito has published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Policy History, Journal of Southern History, and Journal of Urban History among other scholarly journals. He has received fellowships from the Earhart Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

He writes frequently on current controversies related to academic freedom and academic standards including the speech code
Speech code
A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are common in the workplace, in universities, and in...

 issue, the Academic Bill of Rights
Academic Bill of Rights
The Academic Bill of Rights is a document created and distributed by Students for Academic Freedom, a public advocacy group spun off from the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a think tank founded by former progressive, now conservative activist and writer David Horowitz...

, grade inflation
Grade inflation
Grade inflation is the tendency of academic grades for work of comparable quality to increase over time.It is frequently discussed in relation to U.S. education, and to GCSEs and A levels in England and Wales...

, and the murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till
Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...

. He is a former president of the Alabama Scholars Association. In February 2007, Beito was appointed to chair the Alabama State Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. In April, 2008, the Committee had an open meeting at the 16th Street Baptist Church
16th Street Baptist Church
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama which is frequented predominately by African Americans. In September 1963, it was the target of the racially motivated 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls in the midst of the American Civil Rights...

 in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

 which focused on eminent domain
Eminent domain
Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...

 as a possible civil rights issue. It followed this up with another open meeting in April 2009 in Montgomery
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...

. Witnesses alleged that the city of Montgomery has arbitrarily used "eminent domain through the back door" (via selective use of nuisance and blight laws) to demolish buildings owned by minorities and the poor. These allegations generated stories by ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

, Fox News, and other outlets.

Books

  • Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 2009. isbn=9780252034206

  • Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill), 1989.

Downloadable free in PDF form
  • From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, University of North Carolina Press (Cambridge), 1992.

Edited books

  • The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, University of Michigan Press for The Independent Institute (Ann Arbor), 2002.

Reviews of Beito's work and interviews


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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