Elizabeth Lilly Stewart was a graduate student when Dr. Joe Gray Taylor, Chairman of the History Department at McNeese State University, asked her to write a review for a scholarly journal of a prominent Historian's newest offering. The book she was to review, and criticize if necessary, was the first and only biography ever written of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, Reconstruction governor of Louisiana, and the first African American to be governor of a state. As the book was authored by James Haskins, an established scholar, she worried being viewed as immodest, or even an 'upstart,' should she reveal flaws in the work. I know that because I was there; she was my mother.
Why would Dr Taylor, the Historian who was, at that time, arguably America's leading expert on Reconstruction in Louisiana, ask a graduate student to undertake such a task? The answer is that my mother had chosen to write her Master's thesis on P.B.S. Pinchback, and was in the midst of years of primary research on the subject. She was, in effect, the best-qualified person to write such a review. My mother's later reference to James Haskins' biography in her own book on Pinchback reveals in part the results of the review she penned for the Louisiana History Journal. She recorded her view of Mr. Haskins' book with generosity, though not entirely to his advantage:
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