He wrote that after all, it fell the lot of one Southerner from Virginia to define America. His Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the three seminal works on race relations to the 20th century. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described it as the Bible of the civil-rights movement. Woodward demonstrated that it was not the end of Reconstruction or the withdrawal of Yankee troops that brought about Jim Crow, but rather the rise of populism. The book was controversial then and now because it did not sufficiently reinforce negative stereotypes about white Southerners.
History is replete with subtlety and nuance.
The true stories of real people can be both entertaining and informative. Dividing history into categories is useful for instruction, so long as the end pursuit is understanding human nature through past experience. Woodward, accordingly, applauded the introduction of what has become known as cultural history. Toward the end of his life saw cultural and political correctness bring about the devolution of history. Scholarly labor was abandoned in favor of developing self-esteem, empirical research gave way to theorization, and the very idea that there are facts engendered denial.