RENAISSANCE MAN
Historical Association Honors Dougan's Lifetime Achievement
Although Michael Dougan wasn't there to cry "Foul!" when, early in the last century, automotive pioneer Henry Ford called
history nothing but "bunk" it's nonetheless a given that the celebrated Southern historian and self-proclaimed
19th-century man has seen more than his share of what the creator of the industrial assembly line helped set in motion.
Specifically, the historian sees a world running full-tilt on the supercharged engine of a technology that, today,
threatens to reduce man's view of the world to a series of digitized images projected onto the restricted contours of a
computer screen.
Had he been within earshot of Ford's now-infamous pronouncement, the 62-year-old Dr. Dougan might have fired back
with these words from the French novelist Flaubert: "Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."
However, it's more likely that Dougan, a man who hasn't been at a loss for words since he first began to speak, and also
a man not unaccustomed to taking on giants when the combatants' weapon of choice is wits, would have thoroughly debunked
Ford, the mechanical genius and industrial visionary, for his ignorance of a past that never stops intruding on every
aspect of our present.
Michael Dougan, whose retirement from the faculty at Arkansas State University was effective June 30th, has through the
years built a solid national reputation as an historian's historian. The Neosho, Missouri, native and longtime Jonesboro
resident specializes in Southern history, a field in which he has long applied his impeccable scholarship and his vast
intellectual resources. A prolific and accomplished writer, Dr. Dougan has been called by more than one of his admirers
a true Renaissance Man. His fields of specialization alone range far and wide, from the history of Arkansas to the South
in general. Moreover, Dougan has written extensively on the subject of the Civil War, the intricacies of legal history,
the history of the newspaper business in Arkansas, and Arkansas' always paradoxical, sometimes infuriating, but never
uninteresting political landscape, from its beginnings in the 19th century to the present.
The professor also noted, with his tongue planted somewhere in the vicinity of his cheek, that the Henry Ford story
"ties in to my father, the Royal Air Force World War I pilot from whom I perhaps took an airborne view of history."
Although an intellectual and a scholar of wide repute, Dr. Dougan is a pragmatist to the bone. He is fully cognizant
that the nation and the world are being transformed on an almost daily basis by a technological revolution that may be
unprecedented in history. Still, when it comes to the internet and the Web, he casts something of a jaundiced eye at the
role they will continue to play in the field of education.
Noting that the internet is rife with "information that has nothing to do with knowledge per se," Dougan turned adamant
on the subject. "If anything, the impact of the Web has probably reduced the amount of reading many students do, which
was pathetic in the first place. Although the internet is an incontrovertible fact of life in educational circles these
days, Dougan said the technology is no substitute for a classical education, where the importance of the written word, of
books in particular; cannot be overstated.
"The library at ASU has dumped all the journals that were published before 1980," Dougan said, the disgust in his voice
almost palpable. "I can't go to the internet to get that vast body of material . . . And there's no way I can go to get
the stuff at larger libraries around the country, which means that a whole avenue of research has been shut down
permanently."
Ever animated by an infectious enthusiasm and deep-seated passion for his work, Professor Dougan, who began his career at
ASU in 1970 as a teacher of history, recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the board of trustees of
the Arkansas Historical Association (AHA). The coveted achievement was presented at the group's annual meeting in
Mountain View. Dougan was cited for his "lifelong dedication to the study, teaching and preservation of Arkansas history"
and his many accomplishments during his long career at ASU.
Tom W. Dillard, University of Arkansas archivist and former president of the AHA, said, "Michael B. Dougan has contributed
immensely to Arkansas history, including writing an authoritative history of the state, publishing groundbreaking articles
on legal history, and delving deeply in the social and cultural history of Arkansas."
Dougan, who received his master's and doctoral degrees in history from Emory University in Atlanta, GA, where he worked
under the tutelage of legendary Southern historian Bell Irvin Wiley, was designated an "emeritus professor of history" in
ceremonies held at ASU last spring.
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In a recent interview on the front porch of his historic, National Register-listed J.V. Bell home,
where Dr. Dougan and his wife, Carol, have lived for many years, the historian spoke glowingly of his
mentor Wiley, author of "The Life of Johnny Reb" and its companion publication, "The Life of Billy Yank."
Both books are indispensable volumes in the vast canon of Civil War literature.
"I guess you could say I was a chip off the old Wiley dingaling," Dougan said with a guffaw, the broad
grin on his face as familiar to those who know him as is his offbeat sense of humor along with his
sterling skills as a raconteur in the best Southern tradition. "A good deal of my personality fit in
and blended with Wiley's style."
One of the Wiley hallmarks as an historian that Dougan continues to perpetuate in his own career is a
disdain for "ivory tower scholars" who ply their craft and art at a disdainful remove from those who are
history's creators, the people.
"Bell Wiley was an activist, a doing kind of historian," Dr. Dougan said. "He was the very opposite of
the esoteric type." Ditto for Dougan, who by his own admission has spent much of his
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career "in the trenches . . . with the people," where the richest lode
of history is always awaiting discovery. When Dougan was asked if he could single out a favorite book or paper from
his oeuvre, he was reluctant to narrow the list. "You know, you love all your 'children,' unless you do something so
bad you want to hide from it . . . I'm just pleased that, although I don't consider myself a stylist or a literary
person, there has been some consistency in my (writing) style . . . I just give the people my
framework and let them speak their piece" on matters of historical interest and import. "I've always considered myself a
vessel into which our history poured for collection and separated for eventual digestion."
Although vast and impressively diverse, the body Dougan has produced through the years has its ringers, as much for
their peerless scholarship as for their popularity with a wide variety of readers. Four of the more popular works are
"Confederate Arkansas: The People and Policies of a Frontier State in Wartime," "Arkansas Politics: A Reader (edited
with Richard P. Wang, ASU professor of political science)," "Arkansas Odyssey: The Saga of Arkansas from Prehistoric
Times to Present," and "Community Diaries: Arkansas Newspapering, 1819-2002."
Retirement for Michael Dougan will be anything but a retreat into a netherworld of torpor and inactivity. The Dougans
will continue to reside in Jonesboro, in their beloved Victorian home, where the historian is already hard at work on a
revision of "Arkansas Odyssey" along with articles he is writing for the "Encyclopedia of Arkansas" and other projects
that are too numerous to list.
Nor will Dougan let retirement preclude his role as a community activist, where his name is as familiar to readers of
letters to the editor in The Jonesboro Sun as it is in state, regional and local political and governmental circles.
As the writer E.L. Doctorow once said, "History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew."
For Michael Dougan, just being in the present is his ticket to explore to his mind's content, a past whose presence
is his constant, familiar, heartfelt companion.
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The above article, by Mike Overall, published in "Jonesboro Occasions" July 2006, reprinted by permission.
On the cover: Dr. Michael Dougan. Photo by Dero Sanford.
Dr. Michael Dougan, Neosho High School Class of 1962.
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