Holt, Thomas C. (Thomas Cleveland), 1942-

Historian and scholar Thomas C. Holt was born on November 30, 1942 in Virginia. Holt attended and graduated from segregated schools in southside Virginia. He went to work for the SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement in his hometown, Danville, and in Cambridge, Maryland in 1965. He graduated from Howard University with his B.A. degree in 1965 and his M.A. degree 1966. Following that, Holt worked for a federal antipoverty programs trying to change the living and working conditions of migrant and seasonal farm workers until 1968. Holt began his teaching career at Howard University in 1972 and in 1973, he received his Ph.D. from Yale University.

Holt taught at Howard University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Berkley before becoming a professor at the University of Chicago in 1988. Holt is the University of Chicago's James Westfall Thompson Professor of American and African-American History. Over the course of his career, Holt has published the following books:Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction(1979),The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (1992), andThe Problem of Race in the 21st Century(2000). Holt also co-wroteBeyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Post-emancipation Societies(2000) with Rebecca J. Scott and Frederick Cooper.

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