Howard K. Beale was known not only as a distinguished American historian, but also as a man of deep social conscience. He was born in Chicago, April 8, 1899, and attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School, which had been founded by John Dewey. Beale pursued his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago, receiving a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1921, and continued his studies at Harvard, where he earned an M.A. in 1922, and a Ph.D. in 1927. The academic year 1924-25 was spent in Europe on the Edward Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, which was awarded by Harvard jointly to Beale and Merle Curti. Beale held his first teaching position, aside from student assistantships at Chicago and Harvard, at Grinnell College in Iowa, in 1925-26. He then moved to Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where he taught for four years, 1926-1930. The following three and a half years he spent at the Library of Congress, doing research under the auspices of the American Historical Association. In 1934 he was a visiting lecturer at New York University and filled in for a half year for William E. Dodd at Chicago, after Dodd became ambassador to Germany. Beale accepted the position of professor of history at the University of North Carolina in 1935, and he taught there for the next thirteen years. His students at North Carolina included C. Vann Woodward, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Tom Watson under Beale's direction, and Arthur S. Link. In 1948, Beale joined the history department of the University of Wisconsin, where he remained until his death, December 27, 1959.
Howard K. Beale's scholarly interests were concentrated in three areas of American history. The first was the Civil War and Reconstruction. He published his first book, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, in 1930 and later edited the diaries of Edward Bates and Gideon Welles. He also wrote extensively on Civil War and Reconstruction historiography. His second area of interest was the history of academic freedom, which led to his book, A History of the Freedom of Teaching in American Schools, published in 1941. Beale's last major interest was Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power, an expanded version of his Albert Shaw lectures at Johns Hopkins University, appeared in 1956. Beale was working on a biography of Roosevelt at the time of his death.
Throughout his academic career, Beale participated actively in many liberal public causes. He was prominent for many years in the American Civil Liberties Union and was an outspoken critic of government censorship. From early in his adult life, Beale was a tireless champion of the rights of minority groups, especially Negroes, and during the Second World War he acted as an advisor to conscientious objectors. His public posts included service as a director of the National Japanese-American Student Relocation Council, a director of the National Association for the Prevention of War, and a trustee of Dillard University in New Orleans.
