Other names Ray Smock Name Raymond Smock | Role Historian Education Roosevelt University | |
Born February 8, 1941 (age 83) ( 1941-02-08 ) Known for Historian of the United States House of Representatives Notable work Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow Books Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow People also search for Louis R. Harlan, Pete Daniel, Roger H Davidson | ||
Raymond W. Smock (born February 8, 1941) is an American historian, currently serving as director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University, and formerly the Historian of the United States House of Representatives (1983-1995).
Contents
- Education
- House Historian
- Robert C Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education
- Works
- Works overseen
- Works authored
- Works edited
- Works co authored or contributed to
- Articles
- References
Education
Smock received a B.A. in American History from Roosevelt University in Chicago in 1966. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1974.
House Historian
Smock was a key planner of the national commemorations of the bicentennials of the U. S. Constitution and of the U.S. Congress and oversaw numerous related publications. He was senior historical consultant to WGBH-TV public television in Boston on their 26-part telecourse, A Biography of America (2000). He served as a historical consultant to the National Constitution Center, the first museum dedicated to the U. S. Constitution located on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.
Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education
In 2002, Smock was named the director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education. The center houses Senator Robert C. Byrd's papers and other corresponding collections and serves as a study and research center on the United States Congress and the U.S. Constitution and conducts public programs and teacher training.
Smock was a consultant, editor, and writer for a DVD called Foundations of Freedom, designed to teach high school students about the Constitution. It was produced by Wheeling Jesuit University and distributed to 25,000 high schools in 2005. For his work on this project Wheeling Jesuit University presented him with the “Foundations of Freedom” award for educating Americans about the U.S. Constitution.
Smock is a member of the adjunct history faculty at Shepherd University, where he teaches U. S. History and Public History.
He served as president of the Association for Documentary Editing, the Society for History in the Federal Government, and the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.
In 2006, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III appointed Smock to the board of the West Virginia Humanities Council. In 2009 he was appointed to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, an independent agency of the federal government affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration, where he served until 2016.
Works
Smock's early professional career was as an assistant editor, then co-editor of the 14-volume Booker T. Washington Papers with his colleague Louis R. Harlan, from 1967 to 1982.Smock's biography of Booker T. Washington was published in 2009.