Julius Sherrard Scott

Julius Sherrod Scott III (July 31, 1955 – December 6, 2021) was an American scholar of slavery and Caribbean and Atlantic history. He was best known for his influential doctoral thesis and later book The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. Scott's original thesis has been regarded as "arguably the most read, sought after and discussed English-language dissertation in the humanities and social sciences during the 20th century", elevating the historian to the position of an intellectual "cult figure among scholars" in the field.

Early life Julius Sherrod Scott III was born on July 31, 1955, in Marshall, Texas, to Julius Samuel Scott Jr. and Ianthia "Ann" Scott née Harrell. His grandfather, Julius Sebastian Scott Sr., served as the ninth president of Wiley College (1948-1958). His father Julius Jr. was a Methodist minister who later served as president of Paine College (1975–1982) and Wiley College (1996–2001); his mother Ann was a librarian. In 1961, he began attending MacGregor Elementary School in Houston as one of the first Black students in its newly-integrated first grade class. Despite the instruction being officially integrated, Scotty and the Black girl in his class were only permitted to use a single segregated restroom outside the school. Scotty’s parents learned of this fact only after hearing him say "Thank you, God, for letting me have my own bathroom at school" during his prayers. He submitted his completed dissertation in 1986.

As an unpublished dissertation The Common Wind was cited hundreds of times in scholarly literature. In Time, historian Vincent Brown called the dissertation "so exciting, original, and profound" that it inspired "an entire generation to create a new field of knowledge about the past". Eugene Holley, writing in Publishers Weekly, described the dissertation as "renowned for its creativity, imaginative research and graceful prose". In the early years after its completion, graduate students at Duke passed a Xeroxed copy of the thesis from person to person like an "underground mixtape", treating it as a model for how to study and center Black life in the Atlantic World.

Scott initially signed a contract with Oxford University Press to publish the dissertation in book form shortly after completing his degree, but did not agree with suggestions for revision and opted not to publish the book. the dissertation remained unpublished until a Verso Books editor, referred by another historian, offered to publish the text with minimal revisions. Scott taught at Duke from 1988 to 1994, where he helped to train scholars including Vincent Brown, Jennifer L. Morgan, and Claudio Saunt. Subsequently, he held a joint faculty appointment in the departments of History and of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he died on December 6, 2021, from complications related to diabetes.