Senate Resolution 6

(As Adopted by Senate)

A RESOLUTION TO PAY TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING HISTORIAN THOMAS K. MCCRAW FROM CORINTH, MISSISSIPPI, AND EXPRESSING THE SYMPATHY OF THE SENATE ON HIS PASSING.

WHEREAS, Thomas K. McCraw, 72, a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian who used biography to explore and enrich our understanding of many thorny issues in economics, died on Saturday, November 3, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and

WHEREAS, Professor McCraw, who taught at the Harvard Business School from 1976 to 2007, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1985 for his ground-breaking work, Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis and Alfred E. Kahn. The book told the story of the rise of the regulatory state in this country, focusing on the service and leadership of four very different men, of different eras, and showing how government regulation of industry affected the American economy from the late 19th to the late 20th Centuries. Prophets of Regulation was recognized as remarkable for its melding of scholarly insight with engaging prose; and

WHEREAS, "Mr. McCraw explains sophisticated economic theory in accessible terms," The New York Times Book Review said, "and has an historian's knack for isolating such basic American traits as a mistrust of big business and for showing how regulators manipulated these traits to implement their policies"; and

WHEREAS, in Prophets of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (2007), Professor McCraw insightfully explored capitalism, warts and all, through the life story of its leading 20th Century Advocate and Exponent, Joseph Schumpeter, with his Darwinian theory of Creative Destruction: that businesses must be rendered obsolete and extinct by other better businesses if an economy is to move forward; and

WHEREAS, his final work, The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin and other Immigrants Forged the American Economy, published late last year, is almost a page turner, bearing the tensions and grace of a well-written novel, as Professor McCraw tells the story of how Alexander Hamilton saw the way out of the war-based debt crisis orders of magnitude greater than today's, but into which our nation had been born, overcoming political obstacle after obstacle and succeeding because he had earned the ear and trust of President George Washington, only to be succeeded by Albert Gallatin as Secretary of the Treasury, with a different but equally sophisticated and pragmatic approach to the nation's financial stability, overcoming new political obstacles and succeeding because he had the ear and trust of President Thomas Jefferson; and

WHEREAS, "The key feature of his work is the use of biography," said Geoffrey G. Jones, who succeeded Professor McCraw as the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. McCraw used the life stories of flesh and blood, flawed but driven human actors as tools for teaching, bringing to engaging reality for a broader audience the all-important economic dimension of social life in organized society; and

WHEREAS, at the death of Professor McCraw, he was appropriately called "an extraordinarily insightful and influential Historian who won acclaim both on this campus [the Harvard Business School] and around the globe," by Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. "His work will influence students and scholars for generations to come"; and

WHEREAS, Dean Nohria's penultimate compliment, that "Tom was the personification of the phrase 'a gentleman and a scholar'," is a sentiment readily acknowledged and shared by those who knew Tom through the years, as far back as his days as an undergraduate at Ole Miss as a member of the Class of 1962; and

WHEREAS, Thomas Kincaid McCraw was born on September 11, 1940, in Corinth, Mississippi, near where his father, John, a Civil Engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority, was helping to build a dam. The family moved frequently, and Thomas graduated from high school in Florence, Alabama; and

WHEREAS, he attended the University of Mississippi on a Navy ROTC scholarship. After graduation, Tom McCraw served four years in the United States Navy, mostly in Bermuda, an experience evident in his vivid description of the early years of United States Naval Forces in Founders and Finance. He earned a Master's Degree and Doctorate in History from the University of Wisconsin and taught at the University of Texas before moving to the Harvard Business School in 1976; and

WHEREAS, Professor McCraw lived in Belmont, Massachusetts, with his wife, the former Susan Morehead of Jackson, Mississippi. College sweethearts at Ole Miss, they married in 1962. His other survivors include daughter, Elizabeth McCarron; son, Thomas Jr.; brother, John; and three grandchildren; and

WHEREAS, Professor McCraw's other books include: American Business, 1920-2000: How It Worked (2000), a compact overview. At Harvard Business School, he developed a standard first-year course for M.B.A. students, Creating Modern Capitalism, which enhanced the profile and popularity of business history at the school and whose syllabus became a textbook, now widely used, of the same name; and

WHEREAS, Tom McCraw was an historian who made things accessible to a far-wider range of people than normally read scholarly works, never passing up a chance to draw on the wisdom and words of Mississippi writers such as William Faulkner and Shelby Foote; and it is with sadness that we note the passing of this influential historian who was hailed for melding engaging prose and scholarship, and who brought honor to his native university, community and to the State of Mississippi:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, That we do hereby pay tribute to the memory of Pulitzer Prize-winning Historian Thomas K. McCraw from Corinth, Mississippi, and express to his surviving family, many friends and colleagues, the sympathy of the Senate on his passing.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That this resolution be presented to the surviving family of Professor McCraw, forwarded to the University of Mississippi, the Harvard Business School and the Mississippi Arts Commission, and made available to the Capitol Press Corps.