28 Facts About Herbert Gutman

Herbert George Gutman was an American professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he wrote on slavery and labor history.

Herbert Gutman attended John Adams High School and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Queens College in 1948.

Herbert Gutman received a master's degree in history from Columbia University.

Herbert Gutman's thesis studied the Panic of 1873 and its effects on New York City, and focused heavily on workers' demands for public works.

Herbert Gutman later married Judith Mara and they had two daughters.

Herbert Gutman taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1956 to 1963.

Herbert Gutman then took a position teaching history at the State University of New York at Buffalo beginning in 1963.

Herbert Gutman left SUNY-Buffalo in 1966 to take a job at the University of Rochester.

Herbert Gutman left the Rochester in 1972, and became a professor of history at the City College of New York.

Herbert Gutman joined CUNY's Graduate Center in 1975, and stopped teaching at City College in 1975 to teach full-time in the graduate program.

In 1977, Herbert Gutman received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to teach labor history to union members.

In 1984, Herbert Gutman received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was teaching classes at four historically black colleges for the United Negro College Fund.

Herbert Gutman suffered a severe heart attack in late June 1985 at his home in Nyack, New York.

Herbert Gutman died five weeks later at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on July 21,1985.

Herbert Gutman focused on the history of workers and slaves in the United States.

Herbert Gutman is considered one of the co-founders and primary proponents of the "new labor history," a school of thought that believes ordinary people have not received the proper amount of attention from historians.

Herbert Gutman developed a critique of the "Commons school" of labor history that focused on markets and minimized other factors such as technological or cultural changes and working people themselves.

Herbert Gutman systematically took Fogel and Engerman to task on a variety of fronts.

Herbert Gutman noted the authors were extremely careless in their calculations, and often used the wrong measurement to estimate the harshness of slavery.

Herbert Gutman challenged this argument, as Fogel and Engerman seemed to ignore the fact that slave's spouses were not always sold to the same master.

In Slavery and the Numbers Game, Herbert Gutman argued that Fogel and Engerman chose their examples poorly, focussing on plantations which were unreflective of broader southern society.

Herbert Gutman roundly criticized Fogel and Engerman on a host of other claims as well, including the lack of evidence for systematic and regular rewards and a failure to consider the effect public whipping would have on other slaves.

Herbert Gutman argued that Fogel and Engerman had fallen prey to an ideological pitfall by assuming that most of those enslaved had assimilated the Protestant work ethic.

Herbert Gutman conclusively showed that most slaves had not adopted this ethic at all and that slavery's carrot-and-stick approach to work had not shaped the slave worldview to mimic that of their owners.

Herbert Gutman emphasizes the slaves' responses to their treatment at the hands of slaveowners.

Herbert Gutman concluded that most black families largely remained intact despite slavery.

Herbert Gutman further argued that black families remained intact during the first wave of migration to the North after the Civil War.

Herbert Gutman was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.