Mills, C.Wright (Charles Wright), 1916-1962

American sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) was born in Waco, Texas. In 1934 he enrolled as an undergraduate at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, but one year later transferred to the University of Texas. In Austin he met and married Dorothy Helen Smith. His first published work, Language, Logic and Culture appeared in the American Sociological Review in 1939. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin (1942), and worked as a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland from 1941 to 1945, then at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University from 1945 to 1948. Mills was appointed to the full time faculty at Columbia in 1946 and served there until his death in 1962. He and Dorothy separated in 1945. From 1947 to 1959 Mills was married to Ruth Harper, and subsequently to Yaroslava Surmach until his death. His major works include White Collar: The American Middle Class (1951), The Power Elite (1956), The Causes of World War III (1958), and The Sociological Imagination (1959), as well as numerous articles, addresses and reviews. A self-described Texas maverick, Mills’ relations with other sociologists were sometimes contentious. He traveled extensively to Europe, Russia and Latin America, and maintained a wide-ranging correspondence. First diagnosed with angina in 1957, Mills died of a heart attack at his home in West Nyack, New York in March 1962.

From the guide to the Charles Wright Mills Papers 70-096; 98-078; 99-241; 2000-224; 2001-034; 2001-105; 2009-071. 23284756., 1934-1965, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)

...