Stephen B. Oates is a former professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is an expert in 19th-century United States history. Oates wrote 16 books during his career, all following the same theme, biographies of 19th-century American historical figures. He was accused of plagiarism in his biography of Abraham Lincoln, but was cleared by the University of Massachusetts and the American Historical Association. Oates received the 1993 Nevins-Freeman Award of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for his historical work on the American Civil War. Let the Trumpet Sound; The Life of Martin Luther King Jr. received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights 1983 Book award given annually to a novelist who "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes - his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity." [More at Wikipedia]

January 1st, 1936 in   /  Died:   Aug 20th, 2021