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- Hubert Davis Humphreys (April 21, 1923–August 28, 2009) was an historian formerly affiliated with Louisiana State University in Shreveport who specialized in oral history and in studies of his native North Louisiana. Humphreys was born to Ralph and Ellie Humphreys in the village of Grayson in Caldwell Parish south of Monroe, Louisiana. He graduated in 1940 from Grayson High School and then joined the Civilian Conservation Corps two years prior to its abolition. He studied briefly at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. In 1942, he accepted employment with the United States Army Corps of Engineers until in 1943 he joined the United States Navy for three and a half years of World War II duty. Humphreys served under Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill’s Fifth Amphibious Force and fought in the Pacific Theatre: the invasion of Pelletier, Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa, the most costly of the naval battles to the United States. He served on the USS Auburn at the time of the surrender of Nagasaki, Japan. He was awarded three battle stars and numerous citations. Humphries was discharged from the Navy at New Orleans. He then entered Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge under the GI Bill of Rights. There he received in 1950 a bachelor's degree in professional education. In 1953, he received a master of education from the University of Texas at Austin; in 1964, he was awarded a Master of Arts in the field of history, also from LSU. He subsequently engaged in advanced studies under grants at Harvard University, Tulane University in New Orleans, Long Island University in New York City, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. In 1974, he received archival training at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the Georgia State Archives. Under Fulbright-Hays Scholarship grants, he studied in Lebanon in 1967 and in Southeast Asia in 1970. Humphreys spent thirty-three years as an educator in Louisiana, with his first assignment in Webster Parish and then Fair Park High School in Shreveport, where he was named “Teacher of the Year” in 1965. In 1967, Humphreys became one of the charter faculty of LSU in Shreveport,having taught history there until his retirement in 1984. In 1980, he published ‘’Louisiana Oral History Collections: A Directory’’. He also wrote numerous historical journal articles, book reviews, and newspaper columns. A fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association, Humphreys was also affiliated with the North Louisiana Historical Association, Louisiana Association of Social Studies, National Council of Social Studies, Southern Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, American Association of University Professors, Phi Alpha Theta, Society of Southwest Archivists, Oral History Association, and the Louisiana Bicentennial Commission. After retirement, Humphreys researched the history of his native Grayson and the Methodist Protestant Church. In 2007, LSUS named him recipient of "The Hubert Humphreys Endowed Professorship of History in the College of Liberal Arts". He was also an LSUS professor emeritus. Humphreys was United Methodist. He retired in Shreveport but died in Baton Rouge, where he had spent his latter days. Survivors included two sisters, Mildred H. Taylor of Baton Rouge and Melissa Verna Douglas and husband, George W. Douglas, of Shreveport. Services were held on September 5, 2009, in Columbia, the seat of Caldwell Parish. Interment was at Welcome Home Cemetery in Grayson. On September 17, less than a month after Humphreys's death, a second Louisiana historian, Sue Eakin, formerly with Louisiana State University at Alexandria died at the age of ninety. She edited the 1968 work, Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.
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