Judith Kelleher Schafer

Judith Kelleher Schafer (December 12, 1942 – December 16, 2014) was an American historian who specialized in the study of slavery in the United States, particularly as it functioned in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Biography A native of New Orleans, she earned her bachelor's degree from H. Sophie Newcomb College. She graduated from Tulane with a master's in history, Her dissertation was The Long Arm of the Law: Slavery and the Supreme Court in Antebellum Louisiana, 1809–1862. She eventually taught at Tulane University's history department, interdisciplinary studies institute, and law school. Her first book, on slavery-related cases brought to the Louisiana Supreme Court in the antebellum era, won the Simkins Prize of the Southern Historical Association. and eventually became president of the Association. Hurricane Katrina threatened the archival materials she used for her research but luckily "the library had been built as a bomb shelter during the cold war, and it didn't flood." Schafer died in 2014 and was buried at Metairie Cemetery.

Selected works