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Thomas R. Pegram

Professor Emeritus
Thomas R. Pegram

ProfessorTom Pegram

Email: tpegram@loyola.edu
Phone: 410-617-2856
Office: Humanities Center 305

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Thomas R. Pegram was born in the midwest and grew up in California. He received his B.A. from Santa Clara University and a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Brandeis University. After a short stay at Ohio State, he has been at Loyola since 1990. Specializing in the interaction of social movements and American political institutions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dr. Pegram has written books on state-level progressive politics, the history of American temperance and Prohibition, and the 1920s Ku Klux Klan. He is currently working on prohibition enforcement at the state level as a window into American federalism and state-building in the early twentieth century.

Courses Taught

  • HS 103 The Making of the Modern World: The United States II
  • HS 348 The Civil War and Reconstruction
  • HS 350 World War II in the United States
  • HS 352 America Since 1945
  • HS 363 A Century of Diplomacy: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1890
  • HS 366 The Civil Rights Crusade
  • HS 425 Modern American Social Movements
  • HS 460 Seminar: American Progressivism
  • HS 464 Seminar: Social and Political History of Alcohol and Drugs in America
  • HS 465 Seminar: Inside the Civil War

Publications

Pegram Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1900-1933 Partisans and Progressives: Private Interest and Public Policy in Illinois, 1870-1922
 One Hundred
Percent American
 Battling Demon
Rum
 Partisans and 
Progressives

“The Ku Klux Klan, Labor, and the White Working Class during the 1920s,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17 (April 2018), 373-396.  (peer reviewed)

Area of Specialization

  • Late 19th/Early 20th Century American Political and Social History

News

  • Along with several other historians, Dr. Pegram provided on-screen commentary for a recently released Smithsonian Channel film titled "The Klan Makes a Movie," which explores a mysterious 1920s movie made by the Ku Klux Klan. Documents in Pegram's possession provided critical evidence in the investigation.
  • Dr. Pegram discusses prohibition and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in an interview with The History Channel. History Channel Interview.
  • Congratulations to Professor Thomas Pegram, whose new book on the Ku Klux Klan was recently reviewed in the New York Times. Read a review of Dr. Pegram's book.