# John Donald Hicks

John Donald Hicks (1890–1972) was an American historian specializing in political history. He taught at the University of California Berkeley, where he directed 45 PhD dissertations. He was the Morrison Professor of American history from 1942 until 1957, when he became emeritus. He was elected president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. He served as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge in 1950–1951.

## Career

Hicks was born in Missouri to a Methodist minister who was rotated to different parishes. He grew up in Wyoming and taught there briefly before attending Northwestern University for his BA and MA degrees in history. He took his PhD in American history at Wisconsin under Frederic L. Paxson.
Hs career took him to teaching positions at Hamline University, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Wisconsin. At each he served as chair of the History department and at Nebraska as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He was on many committees at Berkeley, as well as dean of the Graduate Division for two years, and chairman of the history department for four years.

## Historian of Populism

In 1931 Hicks became the most influential historian of the Populist movement of the 1890s. Martin Ridge finds that," Reviewers of The Populist Revolt commended Hicks for his judicious and objective treatment of a complex subject and praised not only his style but also his careful synthesis of the existing literature." Hicks emphasized economic pragmatism over ideals, presenting Populism as interest group politics, with have-nots demanding their fair share of America's wealth which was being leeched off by nonproductive speculators. Like other scholars Hicks portrayed the deep drought in the 1880s that ruined so many Kansas farmers. He searched for deeper grievances, including financial manipulations, deflation in prices caused by the gold standard, high interest rates, mortgage foreclosures, and high railroad rates. Corruption accounted for such outrages and Populists presented popular control of government as the solution, a point that later students of republicanism emphasized.

## Textbooks

His textbooks on U.S. history in various editions reached over two million undergraduates. Older readers appreciated its qualities. For example, historian George Fort Milton Jr. admired Hicks's "capacity for extraordinary compression without at the same time either getting the style too bare-bones for pleasurable reading; or the facts too black-and-white for the necessary implications of gradations of gray."

## Publications

* "The Organization of the Volunteer Army in 1861 with Special Reference to Minnesota," Minnesota History Bulletin (Feb. 1918) pp. 324–368. online
* "The Origin and Early History of the Farmers’ Alliance in Minnesota," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 9#3 (1922), pp. 203–26. online
* The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (U of Minnesota Press, 1931). online
* Twentieth-century populism : agricultural discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939 with Theodore Saloutos (1951) online
** Also published as Agricultural discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939 (1951) online
* A Short History of American Democracy, (6 editions, with George E. Mowry, 1956+)
* Republican ascendancy, 1921–1933 (1960), a major scholarly history of the 1920s
** Normalcy and reaction, 1921–1933: an age of disillusionment (1960), bibliography published as a pamphlet. online
* The Federal Union, 5 editions with George E. Mowry and Robert E. Burke (1963) 1964 edition online; covers U.S. to 1877.
* The American Nation; a history of the United States from 1865 to the present
* The American Nation, 5 editions with George E. Mowry and Robert E. Burke (1963) online covers 1492 to present.
* A History of American Democracy with George E. Mowry (1963) online
* My Life with History, an Autobiography, (1968), online
* The constitution of the Northwest States (1972) online
* The American Tradition, The Unpublished Papers of John D. Hicks (1955), edited by George E. Mowry