Donald Spivey

Ph.D., University of California, Davis (1976);
Professor

e-mail: dspivey@miami.edu
Office: Rm. 610 Ashe
Phone: (305) 284-2737

      Donald Spivey was born and reared in Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he received his B.A., "with distinction in history" (1971) and a M.A. in history (1972), and from there to the University of California at Davis where he earned his Ph.D. in history (1976). His field is late nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, with specialization in African-American history, sport, labor, music, and education. Professor Spivey has lectured throughout the country and been a frequent commentator on radio, television, and in the print medium. He is currently completing work on the first scholarly biography of Negro League great, Leroy "Satchel" Paige. His previous authored books are Fire From the Soul: A History of the African-American Struggle (2003), The Politics of Miseducation: The Booker Washington Institute of Liberia, 1929-1984 (1986), and Schooling For the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915 (1978). He is editor of Sport in America: New Historical Perspective (1985), and Union and the Black Musician: The Narrative of William Everett Samuels and Chicago Local 208 (1984). His scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as The Journal of Negro History, Social Science Quarterly, Phylon, The Journal of Sport History, History of Higher Education Annual, and The Chronicles of Oklahoma. Spivey has taught at the University of California at Davis; Wright State University; the University of Michigan; the University of Connecticut; and the University of Miami, where he is Professor of History and Cooper Fellow. He is the recipient of numerous recognitions including appointments to the Connecticut Humanities Council, Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. He was one of twelve recipients in Miami of the Ronald McDonald House Award for Distinguished Community Service in 1998, and a recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award of the University of Miami in 2002. Spivey is currently teaching (with Professor Zack Bowen of the English Department, and forty-eight other faculty members) an innovative new interdisciplinary course on "The Sixties." For more information on the course visit the website at http://scholar.library.miami.edu/sixties/.