Released March 23, 2005

HATTIESBURG – Dr. William K. Scarborough, professor of history at The University of Southern Mississippi, recently joined an elite group of scholars who have received the Mississippi Historical Society's highest honor, when he was presented with the B.L.C. Wailes Award at the society's annual meeting March 3-5 in Jackson.

The award, named for the society's founder, is given to a native Mississippian or a person with Mississippi connections who has achieved national recognition in historical research. Past winners of the award include Civil War historian and acclaimed novelist Shelby Foote and David Donald, the Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University and a leading authority on Abraham Lincoln.

"I don't know if I should be mentioned in the same breath as (Foote or Donald), but it reaffirms that maybe I've been doing something right, and it's very gratifying and pleasing to receive such an honor in the twilight of my career," said Scarborough, who has been a member of the Southern Miss faculty since 1965.

His publications include the award-winning The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South and Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth Century South.

A former Mississippi Historical Society president, Scarborough was the 1993 winner of the society's Willie D. Halsell Prize and was awarded the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award at the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration in 2004. He is also a former Charles W. Moorman Distinguished Alumni Professor in the Humanities at Southern Miss.

"Dr. Scarborough certainly deserves this recognition," said Dr. Chuck Bolton, chair of the Southern Miss Department of History. "He has had a long and productive career as a scholar. Meticulously researched and clearly written, the body of work Scarborough has created over the last 40 years has significantly added to our understanding of the world of the antebellum South."

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