W. Burlie Brown

Who was W. Burlie Brown?

William Burlie Brown was a historian at Tulane University, in New Orleans for nearly three dozen years.

W. Burlie Brown, who never used his first name, was a native of New Orleans. He entered Tulane as a pre-law student to please his parents. He was the first in his family to go to college.

After two years in the Pacific during World War II, as part of the Marines, Brown received his law degree and even practiced for two years, but eventually went back to school as a student in 1949, and left with a Doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Brown joined Tulane's history faculty in 1951. He was awarded a Danforth teacher grant in 1955 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957. He was a consultant to the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1963 to 1967.

"We talked as adults -- as colleagues, almost. That was very refreshing," said Christina Vella, who turned her dissertation on the Baroness de Pontalba into the book Intimate Enemies. "He was relaxed," Vella said. "In academia, you don't encounter that often. Professors are posing when they talk to students -- if not to them, then to themselves. He was not a poser."