John F. Marszalek
Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library | Mississippi State University Libraries
John F. Marszalek
Executive Director and
Managing Editor
Ulysses S. Grant
Association
Ulysses S. Grant
Presidential Library
P.O. Box 5408
Mississippi State,
Mississippi 39762
662-325-4552
johnmarsz@yahoo.com
Born July 5, 1939 in Buffalo,
NewYork, the first of five children of John and Regina Sierakowski
Marszalek. He married Jeanne Kozmer on
October 16, 1965 and they have three sons:
John F. III; Chris H.; and Jamie and eight grandchildren: 2 boys and six
girls.
A graduate of Canisiu College, 1961,
he received his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, 1963,
1968.
He participated in ROTC at Canisius
and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Intelligence branch upon
graduation. He was on active duty from
1965-1967, serving at Fort Benning, Fort
Holabird, and in a psychological operations battalion in Viet Nam.
Since that time, he has been a
historian, educator, writer, and administrator:
1967-1968 Canisius College, Buffalo NY, instructor of history
1968-1973, Gannon College, Erie Pa.,
assistant and associate professor
1973-2002, Mississippi State
University, associate professor, professor, William L Giles Distinguished
Professor of History; Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus
2002-present.. From 2008 to the present
he has been the executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association’s Grant
Presidential Library at Mississippi State University. From 1998-2012, he was
the Director and Mentor of Distinguished (Undergraduate) Scholars, He is
co-editor (with Timothy B. Smith) of The World of Ulysses S. Grant book series
at Southern Illinois University Press, 2014 to present.
Marszalek taught courses in the Civil
War, Jacksonian America, and Race Relations and produced over twenty doctoral
and masters graduates, a number of whom are published scholars.
He is the author or editor of fifteen books
and over three hundred articles and book reviews. Sherman, A Soldier's Passion for Order was a finalist for the 1993
Lincoln Prize and won non-fiction awards from the Mississippi Library Association
and the Ohioiana Library Association. His first book Court Martial, A Black Man in America was made into a Showtime
motion picture and reissued as a paperback under the new title Assault at West Point. President Bill
Clinton presented the family of the wronged black West Point cadet a posthumous
U.S. Army commission during a White House ceremony. Along with Charles D.
Lowery, he edited The Encyclopedia of
African American Civil Rights, which the Library Journal named one of the best reference books of 1992.
Three of his books (Sherman, A Soldier’s
Passion for Order, The Petticoat
Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in
Andrew Jackson’s White House, and Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies, A Life of
General Henry W. Halleck) have been History Book Club Selections. His
latest books are The Best Writings of
Ulysses S. Grant (2015) which won a writing award from the U.S. Army
Foundation, Lincoln and the Military
(2014) and A Black Congressman in the Age
of Jim Crow, South Carolina's George Washington Murray (2006). He continues
to lecture widely throughout the nation and has appeared on the major
television networks. He serves on the board of advisors of the Lincoln Forum
and the Lincoln Prize. Canisius College
named him a distinguished alumnus; he received the Richard Wright Literary
Award for life time achievement by a Mississippi author, and the Mississippi
Historical Society presented him its highest award, the B.L.C. Wailes Award for
national distinction in history. His graduate students published a book in his
honor entitled Of Times and Race: Essays Inspired by John F. Marszalek,
2013.
He and his wife, Jeanne, have
established Library Fund Endowments at Mississippi State University, Canisius College
in Buffalo NY and St. Mary’s College in South Bend Indiana. Presently, along
with David Nolen and Louie Gallo of the U.S. Grant Association, he is
completing the first completely annotated edition of the Memoirs of U.S. Grant,
which will be published by Harvard University Press in 2017.