15 Facts About Mel Bradford

Melvin E Bradford was an American conservative author, political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas.

Mel Bradford died just as the term paleoconservative was being coined and preferred the term traditional conservative.

Mel Bradford's conservatism was rooted within the heritage and traditions of the American South.

Mel Bradford studied at Vanderbilt University and wrote his doctoral thesis under the Southern Agrarian and Fugitive Poet Donald Davidson, and thus was admitted to the succession of this movement to recover the Southern tradition.

Mel Bradford was first and foremost a literary scholar and a student of rhetoric.

Mel Bradford was known in literary circles for his work on William Faulkner, where Bradford stressed the importance of the Southern setting and the primacy of community in understanding the action of Faulkner's novels and stories.

Mel Bradford specialized in the history of the American founding and Southern history in the United States.

Mel Bradford frequently wrote for Modern Age, Chronicles magazine and Southern Partisan magazine.

Mel Bradford was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up there.

Mel Bradford studied English at University of Oklahoma and completed his bachelor's and master's degrees.

Mel Bradford then continued his education at Vanderbilt University and graduated with a Ph.

Mel Bradford stayed in academia and taught at several institutions of higher education, including United States Naval Academy, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, and, primarily, the University of Dallas from 1967 until his death.

In US presidential elections Bradford campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, George C Wallace in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, and Pat Buchanan in 1992.

Mel Bradford was for a time the President of the Philadelphia Society.

In 1980, Dr Mel Bradford was initially tapped by President-elect Ronald Reagan for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.